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Historically speaking, nature is naturally natural. However, we are now living in a world that is beginning to challenge our understanding of the natural nature of nature.

Considered objects of slow disaster, these “rocks” are a new breed of object formed in our oceans over a decade from natural sediment mixing with plastic waste. This hybrid form of sediment and plastic, which looks an awful lot like a rock, has been named “Plastiglomerate.”

These plastiglomerates were found along the coastline of Taean County in South Korea, the location of the country’s largest oil spill. 260,000 tons of crude oil were cleaned up within seven years and the area became a place of national pride known as the Miracle of Taean. The clean up became an exemplar of how national unity can thwart even the most harrowing devastation. But if the 2007 oil spill was a disaster conjured through seconds of chaos, these plastiglomerates are evidence of another disaster developing under our noses, slowly and unceremoniously but no less alarmingly.

How do we begin to classify this new object of slow disaster? Is it the product of our material culture? Or is it natural adaptation? Even if we do not have the language to classify these objects, they have a message for us: it is too late to get back to where we were.