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Mike Speiser (Big Mike)
Mary Crowley was a teacher who became a sea captain and dedicated her life to attempting to solve the trash problem in the Pacific Ocean. Her nonprofit, called the Kaisei Project (after the Japanese for “ocean planet”) investigated bold solutions for removing plastic from the oceans, including some that other experts have deemed too expensive or not technologically feasible. Nevertheless, some of Crowley’s ideas showed promise, particularly a ramp-like contraption that helps capture plastic from ocean water. Crowley’s work helped draw attention to the dire state of pollution in the Pacific Ocean and helped illustrate the challenges of trying to deal with pollution after the fact (as opposed to focusing on reducing consumption to prevent pollution in the first place). Her project offered hope that perhaps there is room for motivated outsiders to find solutions that experts have overlooked.
Mary Crowley Quotes in Garbology
The Garbology quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Crowley or refer to Mary Crowley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
But finding these big pieces of ocean trash was not the main source of Crowley’s mounting despair, though she has known these waters for nearly forty years and sailed here back when they were truly blank and pristine and breathtaking. She knows this sort of trash is a huge problem, entangling and killing more than one hundred thousand marine mammals and an even larger number of seabirds—no one knows for sure how many. But what really alarmed her this day wasn’t the trash she could see. It was what she couldn’t see that troubled her, after the bottles, cups and other bobbing trash had been hauled out, and the mirror of water and foam appeared deep blue and clear, flashing by beneath sun and pale sky as she stared down from the railing.
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Chapter 6
Quotes
She tends to see the state of the sea as the ultimate in societal heedlessness—an unintended and untended lab experiment run wild, in which the world finds out just what happens when we dump fifty years’ worth of plastic into the ocean. Now, Goldstein says, it’s time to assess the damage and figure out where to go from here.
Get the entire Garbology LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mary Crowley Quotes in Garbology
The Garbology quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Crowley or refer to Mary Crowley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
But finding these big pieces of ocean trash was not the main source of Crowley’s mounting despair, though she has known these waters for nearly forty years and sailed here back when they were truly blank and pristine and breathtaking. She knows this sort of trash is a huge problem, entangling and killing more than one hundred thousand marine mammals and an even larger number of seabirds—no one knows for sure how many. But what really alarmed her this day wasn’t the trash she could see. It was what she couldn’t see that troubled her, after the bottles, cups and other bobbing trash had been hauled out, and the mirror of water and foam appeared deep blue and clear, flashing by beneath sun and pale sky as she stared down from the railing.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
She tends to see the state of the sea as the ultimate in societal heedlessness—an unintended and untended lab experiment run wild, in which the world finds out just what happens when we dump fifty years’ worth of plastic into the ocean. Now, Goldstein says, it’s time to assess the damage and figure out where to go from here.
