Reflecting upon the perceived limitlessness of the ocean in 1809, French naturalist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck remarked, “… animals living in the water, especially the sea waters, are protected from the destruction of their species by Man. Their multiplication is so rapid and their means of evading pursuit or traps are so great that there is no likelihood of his being able to destroy the entire species of any of these animals.” In the two centuries since Lamarck’s comments, the oceanic surfaces and depths have been permanently altered by human impacts, as have those species dwelling within the watery deep. Once perceived as a wellspring of watery abundance, the seas have been exhausted by overfishing and overrun by waste. An alarm sounds over the surface of these waters, one hastened as a result of rising temperatures: it warns us that by 2050, plastics in the ocean will outnumber fish, and that even the most remote shores on Earth already have plastic castaways washing ashore. Reflecting on this contemporary reality, not only has de Lamarck’s thesis been disproved, but his dictum has been replaced—animal becomes a cipher for plastic, as it spreads and embeds itself within ocean ecologies. The limitlessness of life within seawater is no longer, brought into stark relief by the limitlessness of plastic. Mobilizing the pervasive and insidious presence of microplastics within sea ice, we follow its origins from hydrocarbon to Anthropocene marker embedded within the natural. In recognition of the reanimation of this carbon, we become attentive to spectral and supernatural connotations. In doing so, we align our reading of microplastics with the work of John Carpenter and H. P. Lovecraft to further grasp the material and affective horrors of the Anthropocene. Entering these speculative and spectral sites, we encounter a complex temporal entanglement, as reanimated carbon-as- plastic extends beyond human lifespans into increasingly uncertain futures.