So the Brazil native took to the sands of his adoptive home in Surfside to clean up all the plastic littering the shore. And that’s when he had his a-ha moment.

“I started collecting the plastic at this beach over here and making little fish with it, as a statement,” he says. “The ocean and the sea is for fish not for plastic.”

Instinctively, the professional ad executive took a picture of it, posted it on Instagram, not knowing that a global movement was about to explode.