The Turtle and the Jellyfish That Wasn't

In the warm sea lived an old turtle named Tasya. More than anything she loved to eat jellyfish, soft and see-through and swaying in the water.

Tasya was very old and very wise. She remembered the days when there wasn't a single house on the shore, and she knew every rock in the sea. Her shell was overgrown with soft green weed, and she swam so unhurriedly that she seemed to be flying through the water. Little striped fish liked to swim alongside her, as if she were a big ship.

Every morning sunbeams slid down into the sea like golden ribbons. Tasya glided between them, past branches of coral and bright little fish, looking out for her favourite breakfast.

One day something swayed up ahead. Something clear and light, rippling in the water.

"A jellyfish!" Tasya thought happily, and swam toward her meal.

The closer she came, the stranger it seemed. Jellyfish usually glow a little from inside, and they breathe smoothly, squeezing and opening, squeezing and opening. But this one just hung there, crumpled and still, and it made a faint rustling sound. Still, Tasya was hungry, and an old turtle's eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be. She opened her mouth...

It was a torn piece of a plastic bag that someone had dropped from the shore. Tasya nearly swallowed it.

A boy in a snorkel mask was swimming nearby. He had come to the sea with his parents and had spent all day peering at the underwater world. He saw the turtle, he saw the bag, and he understood at once. The boy took a deep breath, dived down and snatched the bag right from under Tasya's nose.

For a moment they looked at each other through the water. The turtle's big, calm eyes met the boy's round, astonished eyes behind the glass of his mask. Then Tasya slowly waved her flippers and swam aside.

The boy came up, caught his breath and swam to the shore. A wet, crumpled bag dangled from his hand. Above the water it didn't look like a jellyfish at all. There he dropped the bag into a bin.

"Mum! Dad!" he shouted, running up the sand. "A turtle nearly ate a bag! She thought it was a jellyfish!"

Dad crouched down beside him and nodded.

"That happens," he said. "To a sea turtle, a bag floating in the water looks exactly like a jellyfish. That's why it matters so much that plastic doesn't end up in the sea."

That evening the boy told his friends all about it. And the next morning they walked the whole beach together with a sack, picking up sweet wrappers, bottles and scraps of bags. They gathered so much that even they were surprised.

From that day on, the boy's family brought only cloth bags to the beach and carried every scrap of rubbish home. His friends did the same. When the people on the next towels saw them, they began picking up after themselves too.

And Tasya, that evening, found a whole drifting family of real jellyfish. They glowed in the sunset water like tiny lanterns, and she ate her fill. Then the old turtle sank down to the soft sandy floor, tucked in her flippers and closed her eyes. The waves rocked gently above her. The moon rose over the sea and laid a silver path across the water.

By then the boy was already in bed. The window was open, and he listened to the sea. Somewhere down there in the deep, he thought, the wise old turtle was sleeping peacefully.

Goodnight.