As all true sea stories begin, "This is a no-shi**er."

Only...it actually is a true story. Even though it happened nearly twenty years ago, I can still remember the moment clearly.

I was the on-duty S.C.U.B.A diver for the USS Key West, a Los Angeles Class Fast-Attack Submarine, as we made our approach to Sembawang Naval Base in Singapore.

Due to the deep draft of the boat (in the Silent Service we refer to subs as "boats"), and the constant traffic of merchant vessels surrounding the island city-state, we had surfaced about a mile out from land to begin our transit into port.

When the boat got close to land, a compliment of the crew popped the hatches and climbed topside to prepare for mooring. My job as a navy diver was to serve as a lifeguard and rescue swimmer in the event that anyone fell overboard. Not counting the guys up in "the sail" who were helping drive the boat, I was the first one topside.

After weeks of breathing recycled air that stank of machine oil and body odor, I was looking forward to being outside. But what I saw took my breath away.

As I walked along the boat's spine to my guard position at the stern, I couldn't believe all of the garbage stuck to the hull. And I'm not talking about stuff like plastic bags that are naturally clingy. I'm talking about spent lipstick containers and soda bottles. Stuff that floats. Stuff that you would expect to have rolled off the deck when the boat surfaced and water sloshed over the deck.

Only it didn't. And it didn't because there was so much plastic garbage in the water around the boat that the stuff sitting on our hull really didn't have any place to go. As I did a slow 360 of my surroundings, I saw that everywhere I looked, the water was full of garbage. Garbage as far as I could see. And this was a mile out from land. It got worse the closer we got.

Now I'm not trying to rip on Singapore. As a navy diver, I've had the dubious honor of swimming in a lot of polluted waters around the world, and I've learned that this is not a problem unique to Singapore. But as a young sailor who grew up in the midwest, far from any ocean, this was my first experience seeing this kind of pollution in our oceans.

And like that spent lipstick container that refused to wash off the hull, this experience has stuck with me.