Styrofoam on the Shore

By: Carter McNelly

A reflection on ecological grief and shared support

I recently took a vacation to Mexico to unwind a little before a busy holiday season and the start of a new semester. I found myself gravitating toward the shore almost immediately. Each day I’d grab my book, duck under a cabana, and listen to the waves while I read.

One morning, as I walked along the beach, I saw something pale on the sand and, for a second, thought it might be a washed-up piece of coral, sun-bleached, rough, oddly shaped. But when I got closer, it wasn’t coral at all. It was Styrofoam. A small chunk, worn down and softened at the edges, the kind of thing you almost wouldn’t recognize if you weren’t looking for it.

A piece of styrofoam debris found on Playa de Carmen, Mexico (Photo by Carter McNelly)

And then I couldn’t stop seeing it.

A few steps later: another piece. And another. White fragments dusted with sand, half-buried like they were trying to disappear. Some were so weathered they almost looked natural like they belonged there until you paused and leaned in. Farther along the debris line, there was a chunk the size of a log. I kept looking back at it, thinking: that’s probably where so many of these smaller pieces came from. Not all at once slowly. Bit by bit. Day after day.

There wasn’t a dramatic “before-and-after” moment. No single shocking pile. Just lots of small, unremarkable pieces, spread out enough to be easy to ignore… unless you chose not to.

I felt my heart drop in that quiet way it sometimes does, when you realize two things at the same time:

First: I can do something about this. I can pick up the big piece. I can carry it away. I can stop it from breaking down into even more fragments.

Second: I can’t fix the rest of it. Not the tiny beads mixed into the sand. Not the pieces already crumbling into something closer to dust than debris. Not all the other pieces I didn’t notice because I didn’t have time to scan every inch of shoreline.

And then the thought that bothered me most: this wasn’t even unusual. It wasn’t a “headline” kind of discovery. I’d be surprised if there were a single isolated shoreline anywhere on the planet that hasn’t been touched by pollution at some point.

I’m sure you’ve felt a version of this too. Many people have. When you care about the ocean (or any part of the natural world), you don’t stop noticing.

There’s a term for that heaviness: ecological grief.

I co-wrote an article about this with an amazing group of colleagues and friends. In it, we use “ecological grief” and “ecological distress” as broad terms for the emotional responses of loss and despair people may feel in response to biodiversity loss, environmental loss, and climate change.

For people who work in conservation and for people who simply pay close attention those emotions don’t show up in a single, tidy way. Sometimes it’s sadness. Sometimes it’s anger. Sometimes it’s fatigue, anxiety, numbness, or a deep sense of loss that’s hard to put into words, especially around people who haven’t felt it themselves.

That article didn’t come from one moment. It came from a pattern.

As a group, we kept realizing how often ecological grief was present in our work and in our lives… and how rarely we talked about it directly. We had plenty of space for plans, frameworks, deliverables, and “next steps.” But far fewer spaces to say what it actually feels like to witness ongoing loss and still try to stay engaged.

So we started making that space.

Over two years, we tried different coping approaches. We checked in on how it was affecting us. We paid attention to what helped and what didn’t. We wanted to find ways to stay committed to the work without hardening ourselves or quietly burning out.

And what surprised us was how ordinary the most helpful thing turned out to be.

It wasn’t a perfect individual strategy. It was a community.

Regular conversations. A steady place to be honest. A group of people who didn’t need convincing that these feelings were real, or that they mattered. Over time, our discussions became part of the support system. The “how do we cope?” The question became something we could hold together, rather than carrying alone.

What shared support changes

A piece of styrofoam debris found on Playa de Carmen, Mexico (Photo by Carter McNelly)

Shared support doesn’t erase grief. The losses are still real. The headlines still land. The Styrofoam still washes up.

But support can change what grief does inside you.

In our group, we found relief in not being alone with these feelings. We learned how to recognize when ecological grief was activated and how to lean on one another in those moments. We also had to relearn something many of us resist: rest isn’t “giving up.” It’s part of staying engaged for the long haul.

Community didn’t remove the hard truths we were facing, but it helped turn heaviness into something more usable: steadiness, clarity, and a continued willingness to act.

Ecological grief doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. Often, it means you’re connected to place, to life, to what’s at stake.

The real question isn’t “How do I stop feeling this?”

It’s: how do I live with what I know, and still choose to stay engaged?

That beach walk in Mexico didn’t give me a neat answer. But it did sharpen something I already believed: attention is a form of care. And care, when it’s shared, can become sustainable.

If you’ve felt that sinking feeling on a beach or in your chest after reading yet another story here are a few human-sized ways to stay engaged without demanding that you be endlessly upbeat:

• Name what you’re feeling. Language won’t solve it, but it can make it easier to carry.
• Find (or build) a small circle. Even one or two people you can speak honestly with, regularly, can be the difference between isolation and resilience.
• Choose one doable action that matches your capacity. Something repeatable beats a heroic sprint.
• Protect your ability to keep caring. Rest isn’t a reward for finishing it’s part of staying in the work.

If you’ve ever felt your heart drop at what you’ve seen along the shoreline, you’re not alone.

The ocean doesn’t need us to be relentlessly optimistic. It needs us to be clear-eyed, connected, and still willing to show up again and again.