This comic is corny but admittedly, it is a little funny just because of how delusionally happy the two stranded men look for finally reaching “civilization”. They receive false hope of reaching the safety of land (i.e. human civilization), when they’ve actually not reached it at all. The comic is indeed satirical. It ridicules how the men are happy at coming into contact with the pollution as it is a sign of human life, when in fact the excessiveness of the pollution observed should instead be met with horror.
The message here is clear: features of human civilization are being found in natural environments like the ocean where they really have no business existing at all. It’s the definition of pollution—matter out of place. Pollution has come to a point where things characteristic of human activity can be found even in uninhabited spaces all over the globe. Earth is basically a giant dumpsite with the way we’re treating it.
Marine pollution is a prime example of this. As I’ve discussed in other posts, there seems to be an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality. Because the sea is so vast and difficult to regulate, people think they can get away with polluting it. From leaving bits of litter around for the sea to wash away to dumping tonnes of oily wastewater into it, marine environments are treated with utter disrespect.
