Picture the island of Trinidade, a tiny, virtually uninhabited speck of land 1,100 km off the east coast of South America with rugged mountains and sandy beaches. On its picturesque strands, boulders and rocks shimmer green in the sunlight.

Usually, this viridescent sparkle comes from algae that is rather partial to rocks near bodies of water. But these particular rocks on the beaches of this particular island tell a different story, one of the dark underbelly of globalisation and the trash produced by the global fishing trade.

A Brazilian researcher has discovered that the greenish glint has in fact come from fishing nets smashed by waves on the stones that have over time – possibly with the help of seawater and sunshine – melted into a peculiar sediment.

Similarly encrusted rocks have already been found on beaches in the UK, Japan, and Italy. But never has this particular side effect of marine waste been discovered so far away from the civilisation producing it, which is terrible news for this little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, one essentially devoid of human life but littered with signs of human activity. #NIMBY, right?