No high quality source of hydrocarbons goes unexploited for long.
EDIT: Just to clarify: As long as disasters happen slowly enough and there are actually local maxima for the species to evolve "into", everything may be fine for "humans"... but those assumptions may be overly optimistic.
I was thinking more that the plastics in question are free-floating in a soluble medium and thus ripe for digestion by an opportunistic microbe.