The Great Trash Reef synthesizes waste materials and salvage into alternative life forms. Gyre currents in the world’s oceans accumulate trash into islands. Their predominant component is plastic, which breaks down into smaller neurostatic bits, or nurdles. Tragically, small animals consume the nurdles, mistaking them for food, and larger animals eat them starving themselves as well. But there is also a population of skating water insects that uses the debris as a place to lay eggs and thrive. Simultaneously, CO2 in the the environment is causing less global warming than thought, as oceans absorb it. But this also acidifies the oceans, and sea life cannot form shells from the traditional calcium. The pieces created propose life using this new readily available ingredient.