Ok, you've found (miraculously!) you local beach and enjoy taking walks along it. Each evening you drive over after work and enjoy the salt spray coming in.
After a while you become aware of the glistening bodies of starfish being washed up and being a compassionate person when you see them you throw them back in the water hoping they will be OK and get away. After all, someone once told you it may not make a big difference overall but it does matter to each individual starfish - right?
A few days later, there you are doing you thing and you come across a starfish that has an injury. Without thinking much and full of compassion , you pop it in your bucket and finish your walk. On the way home you pop into the vets who treats the starfish, takes £20 from you and you go home with the starfish to tend to it. Of course the poor thing cannot be released so you then need to find someone with a marine set up who (hopefully) will be able to give said star fish a good and safe life.
Still, you managed to find the home and about a month has gone by before you get the starfish sorted out and have enough money to be able to drive back to the beach.
So there you are again, walking along the shoreline throwing back the starfish and out of the corner of your eye you notice 6 feet up on the beach a high tide mark filled with the bodies of dead and dying starfish.
You collect 5 of the dying starfish feeling guilty that , as you had been occupied with saving the life of the one ill starfish, you had not been around to do you daily walks. As you look down at your bucket of 5 sick starfish contemplating if you have the time and money to take them to the vet and look after them you feel some dispair - after all how many lives will be lost if you then can't get to the beach for another month? is it the right thing to do to try and save these five knowing that there are many more you won't be helping?
You sit down to have a quiet think. Would it not be more humane to bash these starfish on the rocks ?
As you sit there you have time to watch the world a bit and you see other people around on the beach. Some of these people are happily walking the dogs with not a care in the world, some you see picking things up and throwing them back and some are collecting things in buckets.
And that makes you feel happier...
...for a while until you see that some of them begin to sit down and contemplate their buckets.
some people come up to you with starfish they have kept in their buckets all day (when they should have just thrown them back immediately) so now you have a bucket full of 10 poorly starfish to worry about.
Its only now, filled with sadness and self doubt that you look at the beach and realise there is something odd about the tide. It dawns on you that it not a natural thing (well really how can in be in the Midlands!) but actually caused by the people who hire the motor boats just up a bit.
These people come here for their love of the water, something to keep the kids amused or just because everyone else is doing it.
So you take a walk to the boat yard thinking perhaps you can do something.
When you get to the boat hire place you see that someone has already got there before you. All over the place there are huge notices that read
"Please use the oars provided and row the boat out past the 10 meter markers as using the engines before then has a devastating effect on the local starfish population. If you cannot manage this on your own please talk to a member of staff who will readlily row you out to the required distance"
And to be fair, quite a lot of people are doing this but there are those who cannot read, do not understand what they read, are concerned about the starfish or simply just too lazy to follow these simple rules.
Now you are filled with total sadness when you realise how simple it would be if people just did this one thing (or didn't hire a boat at all). OK, the odd starfish or two will always find it way on the beach even if they all took care but then you and the other people on the beach would then be able to cope........
So do you put you bucket down, walk away and never return? Decide to only throw back the good starfish and therefore save as many lives as you can or run yourself ragged and full of sadness as you try to do a bit of everything?
.... Sorry no uplifting ending............
