Paddleboarder a witness to the plastification of oceans

A friend of my son’s here on the Canary Island of La Gomera, a bank official about 35 years old, is regularly to be seen standing tall and erect on a large surfboard, propelling himself with a long paddle, along the island’s coasts, writes Damien Enright

Paddle-boarding, for Jose Ramon, is not simply a sport, but a window to the wonders of the marine world. On his solo journeys undertaken anything from 200m to 1km out to sea, he often covers 10 nautical miles.

Travelling silently, literally gliding over the surface, he encounters pelagic life of all varieties at close quarters, and sometimes slips quietly into the water to join it. His mobile phone photographs of these encounters are stunning evidence of the beautiful and generally unseen world of the ocean surface, and also of the terrible toll our human callousness takes on creatures that make it their home.