Jul 30, 2026 · 36 min · 14 segments
Neil McQueen learned to surf as a Texas teenager, and it changed his life – eventually pulling him away from a career as a plastics engineer and into the fight to save the very waters that shaped him…
Avery Thompson
Neil McQueenGuestCarlyle CalhounHostJace TunnellGuest
[gentle music] So what happens is these bags move like tumbleweeds up here, right, until they get caught on the, at vegetation in the sand dunes, but this is so typical here.
When Neal McQueen first started surfing these breaks back in 1978, he wouldn't see much plastic around, but these days it's everywhere.
So nearly every day that Neal surfs here at Packery Channel, he climbs up into the dunes and picks up what he can, hoping to stop the plastic trash from reaching the Gulf waters, where it causes untold harm.
There are days where you, where you're out in the water, and there's, it's like a soup of plastic.
A lot of the stuff has turtle bites taken out of it, uh, especially bags, because they resemble jellyfish in the water, and turtles eat jellyfish.
And so that, you know, that'll get stuck in their gut, and it often kills them.
But it's not just plastic bags that resemble jellyfish that cause problems.
Because as resilient as plastic is, eventually the sun, saltwater, and jostling of the tides will break much of it down into tiny fragments called microplastics.
Which growing research shows is making its way into our own bodies through the foods we eat and the water we drink.
Not to mention, it's just a real buzzkill to see all this trash in an otherwise beautiful place.
Because once that plastic reaches the seawater, it's liable to go nearly anywhere, which Neil demonstrates by squatting down and dragging his finger through the sand in the shape of continents and ocean currents.
And it goes in through that cut there between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba, and then it goes like this and does a loop up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then it goes around Florida and becomes the Gulf Stream that goes up along the Atlantic Seaboard.
What Neil's talking about here is something scientists call thermohaline circulation.
But in layman's terms, it's the global system of ocean currents that moves heat and nutrients through the world's seas.
A report by the World Economic Forum warned that if our current production trajectory holds, the world's oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight by the year 2050.
And a staggering volume of plastic begins its journey right here along the Texas Gulf Coast, the epicenter of the North American plastics industry.
[gentle music] So what happens is these bags move like tumbleweeds up here, right, until they get caught on the, at vegetation in the sand dunes, but this is so typical here.
When Neal McQueen first started surfing these breaks back in 1978, he wouldn't see much plastic around, but these days it's everywhere.
So nearly every day that Neal surfs here at Packery Channel, he climbs up into the dunes and picks up what he can, hoping to stop the plastic trash from reaching the Gulf waters, where it causes untold harm.
There are days where you, where you're out in the water, and there's, it's like a soup of plastic.
A lot of the stuff has turtle bites taken out of it, uh, especially bags, because they resemble jellyfish in the water, and turtles eat jellyfish.
And so that, you know, that'll get stuck in their gut, and it often kills them.
But it's not just plastic bags that resemble jellyfish that cause problems.
Because as resilient as plastic is, eventually the sun, saltwater, and jostling of the tides will break much of it down into tiny fragments called microplastics.
Which growing research shows is making its way into our own bodies through the foods we eat and the water we drink.
Not to mention, it's just a real buzzkill to see all this trash in an otherwise beautiful place.
Because once that plastic reaches the seawater, it's liable to go nearly anywhere, which Neil demonstrates by squatting down and dragging his finger through the sand in the shape of continents and ocean currents.
And it goes in through that cut there between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba, and then it goes like this and does a loop up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then it goes around Florida and becomes the Gulf Stream that goes up along the Atlantic Seaboard.
What Neil's talking about here is something scientists call thermohaline circulation.
But in layman's terms, it's the global system of ocean currents that moves heat and nutrients through the world's seas.
A report by the World Economic Forum warned that if our current production trajectory holds, the world's oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight by the year 2050.
And a staggering volume of plastic begins its journey right here along the Texas Gulf Coast, the epicenter of the North American plastics industry.
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