It was inevitable, Dr. Lopez thought, that life would find a way. Humans were too late to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Oh, they’d managed, finally, to skim away all the floating crap – the bottles and the used bath toys and such – but the molecular plastic – the microscopic bits of polymers that formed the Pacific Cloud – they couldn’t do anything about that.

She scooped the transparent fish out of the water, expecting it to gasp in desperation, but it seemed completely tranquil, suspended between her hands as content as it had seemed in the tide pool where she’d found it.

Jelly-fish had more mass, even the thinnest, palest of them. And yet this creature managed to retain its structure.

She’d have to take it back to the lab to be certain, but she was pretty sure it was made of water, held together by a polymer membrane.

Gently, Ana transferred the fish into a container of water for the trip back to the mainland. She was excited – looking forward to being the first to claim ‘discovery’ of this being.

She was also trepidatious. With this fish’s existence, a new Age of Plastics had begun.