The Ocean Odyssey of Wilson

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In the 2000 Hollywood blockbuster Cast Away, Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems analyst who becomes stranded on a desert island and, desperate for companionship, begins conversing with a volleyball he finds washed up on the sand. He names it Wilson and gives it a mohawk of reeds for hair. Near the end of the movie, Wilson the volleyball slips off a raft and floats away to sea, devastating Noland.  

Wilson the volleyball quickly became an icon: It won a film critics’ award for best inanimate object and even made a 2001 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Now Wilson is getting a second turn in the spotlight as the star of a climate change campaign. Ahead of the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, which kicks off June 9, the Onda Azul Institute in Brazil has launched an interactive video called The Odyssey of Wilson to illustrate how this imaginary friend turned trash could pollute our oceans, fragmenting into microplastics over centuries. The ocean conservation group used real oceanographic data from UNESCO to create the immersive video, which charts the volleyball’s fictional 450-year journey through rising sea levels, raging storms, acidification, and species extinction.

Watch an abbreviated clip of Wilson’s travails below and interact with the full experience here.

Lead image:

• Kristen French

  Posted on June 5, 2025

  Kristen French is an associate editor at Nautilus. She has worked in science journalism since 2013, reporting and writing features and news for publications such as Wired, Backchannel, The Verge, and New York Magazine. She has a masters degree in science journalism from Columbia University.