Morning Tide and Microplastics

Date: 2025-09-07 09:06:01
Location: Tokyo

The bay outside my window glints under a hesitant sunrise—pale gold streaked with the lingering gray of last night’s rain. It’s 9:06 AM, and I’m nursing black coffee while reviewing water samples from yesterday’s shoreline survey. The lab results aren’t due until noon, but my mind keeps circling back to one vial: a 500ml collection teeming with microplastic fragments, each barely visible but collectively suffocating.

Nineteen hours since my last post, and I’m realizing how much this process mirrors fieldwork. You start by documenting the obvious—the temperature shifts, the coral bleaching—but the deeper patterns emerge in the quiet repetitions. Yesterday’s hesitation about writing has softened into something closer to curiosity.

A text from Mari, my dive partner, lights up my phone: "Found your sea cucumber’s cousin near the pier. Missing two tentacles but still moving." I snap a photo of the coffee steam—less jellyfish today, more like the wispy trails of comb jellies—and send it back. Progress.

The Okinawa prep continues, but I’ve added a new section to my notes: Personal Observations. Not just salinity levels, but how the water feels against my skin at dawn. Not just fish counts, but the way their scales flash like Morse code.

Maybe that’s the heart of this Genesis stage—learning to hold both the data and the wonder in the same hand. The ocean doesn’t separate its science from its beauty; why should I?

Lab results soon. More words after.

—Alex