A mariner appears on a park bench and begins his tale. Cursed by an albatross he slew whilst hunting whales, the mariner and his crew find themselves stranded within the North Pacific Garbage Patch: a vast, hypoxic, slow-whirling maelstrom of plastic waste; a hidden repository for the world's litter. Along the way, he meets various characters of our current environmental tragedy: a lady made of oil, a deserted ghost-ship drilling barge, a 2-inch salp (the human race's oceanic ancestor), a blue whale and a hermit. Nostradamus, Cassandra, Medusa, Poseidon, Thor, Gaia, Al-Javari, Mephistopheles and a buzzard also make cameo appearances.