Understanding plastic pollution around the world.

Power. When I think of the ocean, that’s the first word that comes to mind.

I’ve been held under by her for what seemed like hours while surfing. I’ve been battered by hurricane force winds sailing across the North Atlantic a few years ago. Right now, on World Oceans Day, I’m reminded of that power again. The non-profit I work for, The 5 Gyres Institute, is hunkered down in our sailing vessel waiting for the first typhoon of the summer season to pass by.

We’re in Yokohama Marina near Tokyo, Japan, preparing to sail into The Japan Tsunami Debris Field, to learn how fast it’s traveling and what the threats to the ocean may be, as well as the implications for North America and Hawaii when the field eventually makes landfall on the other side of the Pacific.

5 Gyres has gone farther than anyone else to demonstrate that the plastic in the ocean is a problem everywhere – not just the North Pacific. We’ve sailed 25,000 miles in all oceans, documenting the human stain of plastic everywhere we’ve traveled. We take crews from all over the world; teachers, students, artists, musicians, activists, basically anyone who has a vested interest in the ocean’s health and can serve as an ambassador for our cause once she returns to land.

Science is a great thing for understanding, but science often tends to stay in academic circles and if we as a global society are going to solve this problem, we need different touchpoints and other onramps for activism. That’s how we make change.

Our latest expedition will give us an alpha point for our research into plastic pollution – plastic and trash enter the ocean everyday, but trying to figure out when it entered the ocean is nearly impossible once you pick it up in the middle. If we can identify objects from the tsunami, we’ll know how long it’s been there, and learn how fast it’s degrading into smaller pieces and how fast it’s being colonized by sea life. We also plan to reunite any keepsakes with their owners in Japan.

But right now, it’s all about witnessing power in the ocean. The Typhoon Mawar – ironically, the Malaysian word for Rose, is bearing down on southern Japan generating winds over 110 mph. Now that’s power.

Earlier in the week we traveled north to Sindai and Fukushima, the hardest hit area by the tsunami, to volunteer for tsunami debris removal. Everywhere here there is unimaginable destruction. Piles of cars, harbors with new topography, thousands of abandoned house foundations where the buildings once stood – and the beach, piled with plastic and every manner of human wares. Haunting.

We worked at a woman named Shakido’s house that was buried in the earthquake which caused the tsunami. We took an all night bus to shovel mud and rock, but the reward was amazing. We felt like we were doing something. Something good. Her house had been left empty for almost a year because of radiation aftermath from the reactor meltdown. Shakido is about 80, and right out in front of her house are destroyed rice patty fields. She watched the tsunami flood the fields and destroy them from her front porch. 60 years ago she watched allied planes bomb the city from the same vantage point.

Time heals wounds, and time changes everything. And power shifts.

What I see in Japan is a resilient people who are overcoming an incredible disaster that left 20,000 of their people dead. What I learn from watching them dig out from this disaster is that destruction can be remedied, that pollution can be eliminated, that life must go on. It’s the same for our oceans.

Plastic pollution in the ocean is a human caused problem. It affects marine life and has implications for the human food chain. But like tsunami recovery in Japan, it’s a solvable problem.

On this World’s Ocean Day, remember this: if you divide the amount of plastic produced for the U.S. markets by the population, you get roughly 300 pounds consumed by every woman, man and child annually. The solution to plastic pollution starts with you. But awareness is half the battle.

Take the 5 Gyres Plastic Promise and learn about five simple ways you can reduce your plastic footprint.

The solution starts with you. Be the sea change you want to see, and be part of the powerful movement that looks to a better tomorrow. As trite as it might sound, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Read more exclusive reports from previous 5 Gyres expeditions on EcoSalon:

The Eye of the Gyre

Garbage, Saints and Whale Sharks of the South Atlantic

Reflections from a Two-Timer: The Final Chapter in a Voyage Through the Atlantic Gyre

Full archive here.

The post Life from the North Pacific: Waiting Out A Typhoon, Following the Path of A Tsunami appeared first on EcoSalon.

Cool Hunting—Friday nights at San Francisco’s De Young Museum is where you’ll find the city’s culturally cool enjoying cocktails and the best in live music, poetry, films, dance, and lectures. Add world class shopping to the list this weekend at the first ever fair-trade bazaar showcasing fair-trade products from around the globe. Shop for unique items including jewelry, textiles, native handcrafts, and decorative accessories reflecting the many cultures represented in the museum’s collection. Free admission, plus members receive a 10% discount on all purchases. All proceeds support exhibitions, programs, art conservation and preservation efforts at the de Young and Legion of Honor.

Coast Couture—The month of August is Ocean Awareness Month at Fred Segal in Santa Monica. Head down to ZeroMinusPlus, the incredible home and life accessory store on Thursday, August 25 from 6-9 pm for a fundraising event benefiting 5 Gyres and featuring the art of Marina DeBris and her show “Beach Couture — A Trash ‘n’ Fashion Show.” Showcasing the artwork she crafts from trash she picks up as she runs along the coast every morning, “I use humor to startle viewers into taking a closer look at things we usually ignore. The goal is to encourage people to rethink their use of disposables and ultimately reduce waste, “ said DeBris. “Beach Couture” will be up until September 5. The City of Santa Monica will be giving out free reusable bags made by local veterans.

Seattle Sound—At the center of Seattle’s hot indie fashion scene is designer Sara Seumae’s SPUN sustainable collective, where small designers rent rack space to get their work in front of the public. Hosting its first-ever sample sale of the basics-with-a-twist SPUN line on August 27, the sale features 20 to 90 percent off of past-season styles, old stock, samples and one-offs—it’s a great opportunity to try well made, organic cotton clothing made in the U.S.A. Style seekers will also find clothing from Alki Apparel, Bri Seeley, Cameron Levin and many more locavore labels.

The post Eco Style West Vol.23 appeared first on EcoSalon.

seriesThe first in a special series on plastic.

It’s a plastic world and it’s here to stay – the plastic, that is. It clogs our sewers, it litters our beaches, it kills our turtles, it leaches chemicals into our baby bottles (and we’ve recently learned that it’s not just BPA that causes estrogenic activity). But the people who produce and sell this non-biodegradable omnisubstance of our lives sure don’t want you to stop buying, buying, buying. And they’re spending a lot of money to protect their market interest.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be investigating where plastic hides, the powers that protect it, the environmental consequences of widespread adoption, as well as taking a look at alternatives and ways to reduce the plastic footprint. Click through to the slideshow to start the series.

This fall I had the chance to sail across The South Atlantic ocean with pro surfer Mary Osborne, studying plastic pollution in the South Atlantic. I enlisted Mary to the cause and she’s picked up the ball and is running with it, serving now as an ambassador for 5 Gyres. I caught up with Mary recently to chat about what she’s up to in her outreach efforts. To raise plastic use awareness, she has worked with Ventura, California photographer, Angela Izzo to produce this series of portraits with Mary clad in waste packaging.

Says Angela of her inspiration for the series: “By using pop culture imagery and media as an inspiration to create ‘Fantasy’ like scenes and sets, the images entice the viewer to look deeper into the photograph. At once, the viewer is confronted with the actual material being made of plastic trash, and Mary’s iconic image works to target a wider audience who may not be aware of this issue. My goal for this project is to raise awareness of the current plastic devastation confronting our oceans and to encourage change through individual action like bringing your own bag to the store, growing your own food and being mindful of our everyday habits. Together we can make this world a better place.”

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Stay tuned for more synthetic sojourning in the days to come.

The post Plastic Surgery: A Series On Waste, Fashion, Policy And Consumer Culture appeared first on EcoSalon.

ExclusiveThe final chapter in a voyage through the Atlantic gyre.

It’s not what you think, but it is true that I go both ways.

I’ve just finished an epic three-point, five-month voyage that had me sailing from Brazil to South Africa to Namibia to Uruguay. We crossed the Atlantic twice, traveling some 9,000 nautical miles by sea in a rugged sailboat. Along the way, I’ve recorded the adventure – and trials – here at EcoSalon, sending my dispatches to our editor at all hours via satellite. For those of you who are just joining the saga, in addition to journalism, I work with an NGO called The 5 Gyres Institute that hunts the world’s oceans for plastic pollution in areas that no one else studies. We maintain a constant presence at sea, and this expedition completed the first two research transects of The South Atlantic Gyre sampling the ocean surface for plastic every 60 nautical miles.

Here’s what I can tell you right now: There’s a lot of plastic between South America and Africa that no one has ever talked about, and I’ve just spent 63 days at sea staring at it firsthand.

At home in the States, I listen to politicians debate the importance of bag bans in my hometown of Portland. I watch science organizations and universities that study marine plastic pollution fight for supremacy on the issue, along with various NGOs vying to be the dominant voice of the movement. It makes me ill. Out there, in the wide blue frontier, ego is irrelevant. The west coast of the United States, where the vast majority of people who work on this issue reside (and where their research vessels are moored), is roughly 1,400 miles long. But there are millions of miles of beaches in this world with plastic on them and 315 million square kilometers of ocean surface with particles of plastic stratified to the depths. Despite what we hear, it has nothing to do with islands of plastic the size of Texas. It’s a soup, not a tarte.

And it’s crazy, isn’t it? That’s what this job impresses upon me everyday – that we are crazy to be so careless and inconsiderate with a material so resilient and toxic. Yet reflection inspires me, because I’ve also witnessed NGOs, scientists and politicians championing the cause in an ethical, selfless, passionate manner. These people matter, and we owe them our gratitude. They have mine.

All of us, humbly or arrogantly, started using plastic in earnest about 40 years ago. As a global society, we are head-over-heels in love with the stuff. Widespread utilization of plastic started, among several reasons, as a way to help women get out of the kitchen – believe it or not, single-use plastic adoption has roots in feminism – but the result has become a pernicious addiction to a wonder material that no one can figure out how to handle once it’s used. And so, in 40 years, we broke the ocean.

That’s a lot of space to break. In terms of pollution vectors, plastic is just another threat, but it’s a big one and as far as the amount of people working on the issue, it’s the underdog in terms of ocean advocacy.

What is big?

It is difficult to really convey how much space we’re talking about. Until you two-time (yes, I’m a sea slut; I’ve done the North Atlantic, too), crossing an ocean by ship, it’s almost impossible to grasp. Flying over the sea doesn’t exactly do it. You need the unique vantage of being that person on the bow of a ship chasing the horizon endlessly for months on end. You need to leave Africa and notice she’s out of view within six hours – and you won’t see anything but light blue on blue or dark grey on grey for a month. You might spot a couple of albatrosses or storm petrels, perhaps the occasional whale or dolphin. But for the most part, you don’t see anything other than a color pallet study for 30 days. Thirty days is a long time.

With the exception of windless days when we can dive and make repairs or conduct additional research, we’re constantly moving forward doing at least 155 nautical miles a day. 30 days, 24/7 moving, 8-9 miles an hour.  There is nothing to hit, nothing to see, no one to meet, with one exception: every hour, we saw plastic. You can get remote as you want to get, and you’re still going to find plastic.

It is no exaggeration to say that we know more as a species about outer space than we do about our own shared oceans. We know it’s really big, so consider the size in the context of an additional ocean reality we now know: on average, there is a pint glass-full of plastic particles scattered over something the size of a football field with the occasional bucket, toothbrush, water bottle or bleach bottle on the 50 yard line tossed in. Over 315 million square kilometers on this planet, this is an almost incomprehensible amount of pollution.

While the media love to run Texas Sized headlines about the North Pacific Garbage Patch, which confuses the public about the true nature of this problem (and some NGOs too), our team and others working with us everywhere in the world are finding the same plastic everywhere – without exception. Density varies, but frequency does not.

It doesn’t matter who owns the issue. A global problem needs a global solution, and this is absolutely a global problem. We need to go beyond the North Pacific, beyond the USA-centricity, beyond the ego and the get. We must start engaging each other as a species, worldwide, and stop this madness made real by something as absurd to our true needs as mere convenience.

Editor’s Note: This is part 14 in an exclusive series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the latest each week here at EcoSalon during his months-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre and beyond.

The post Reflections from a Two-Timer appeared first on EcoSalon.

ExclusiveThe voyage into the heart of the Atlantic gyre continues.

To make landfall in Uruguay, we’re dependent on our engine to propel our vessel through the windless areas of the open sea. But today, as we followed a line of garbage where we pulled out milk crates, buckets, and nondescript plastic garbage, we heard something terrible. The engine seized. Assessing, we determined that the gearbox had broken, rendering the engine useless. To fix this problem we’d need a machine shop, something one doesn’t have 1200 miles from land. The gearbox shaft extends to the propeller. When the propeller doesn’t spin, the boat doesn’t move forward. End of story.

So here I am, spinning slowly between swells on a becalmed sea with sails hanging, adrift in the South Atlantic with new thoughts on the definition of “the middle of nowhere.” Until wind, we wait, we sweat and we swim. The sea is so placid right now, we can watch small fragments of plastic on the surface floating by.

As Skip Dale donned Scuba gear to sort out the propeller shaft below Sea Dragon, I filmed from the water – the interaction between sea life and a fairly substantial ghost net (net bolus, net ball) we had happened upon just before the gearbox broke. Still under power when we discovered it, we had nearly missed it, and would have if it not for Simon’s spear. Yes, our South African artist crewmate, Simon, had brought a handcrafted, hand-fabricated spear on the expedition, the purpose of which had eluded me until now. Seeing it on the dock in Cape Town, I simply thought: hey, he’s an artist; this object is useless at sea, but it’s cool for photos. I could not have been more wrong. As I watched the bolus drift pass, Simon reared up, and like a Zulu warrior took a short running start and launched the spear from the stern. As if he’d done this a million times before, he hooked the net straight away (the design featured a barb so that it sticks whatever it speared), and he pulled it to the boat with a retrieval line, tied a line to it and then let it drift behind us.

A ghost net is a tangled mess of ropes and fishing nets that floats on the surface, kind of like an iceberg. From surface observations it appears small, but underwater it’s a massive ball that extends downward. Rope and fishing tackle are no longer made of natural fibers, having been replaced within the past 30 years by the non-biodegradable counterpart, polypropylene.

As I swam with the bolus, about 50-100 small fish took shelter under it. Three large Dorado orbited the smaller fish under the bolus and at one point I was able to get within a couple feet of them. Beautiful.

What’s bizarre about ghost nets is how many different kinds of ropes and netting materials comprise them. The ropes don’t necessarily come from the same source vessel, harbor, or watershed, but still somehow, in a great cosmic-drift-grind, they find each other out here, in the open ocean. Drifting through time and space, they conspire only to tangle together, tangle marine life, and slowly disintegrate in the sun, sending pollutant infused plastic fragments adrift in the ocean.

Simply touching this net-ball made a cloud of polypropylene dust explode into the water. I watched as the tiny fish just breathed right through it, unaware. As I hovered there, with Sea Dragon’s belly in the azure distance, I began to shudder to think about where I was, what I was doing and what I was seeing.

With a chill, I realized I was the first person on earth to shoot underwater video footage of a naturally occurring net bolus in the middle of the South Atlantic Gyre. It’s not a realization that fuels the ego, but one that stirs the senses as they rub up against the definitions of words like massive, horrific, unseen, random and sublime.

With modern technology, it’s often easy to forget you’re in the middle of the ocean – indeed a blue desert that encompasses 70 percent of the earth’s surface (only five percent of which has been explored). Yet here I was, having no idea that when I woke up this morning what awaited me in 15,000 feet of water.

Here I swam, untethered to anything, alone, observing bits of manufactured goods that once started out as oil in the ground. That oil was extruded from different sources, then refined at different refineries and shipped to different rope factories all over the world, sold, bought, lost only to one day collect here and be happened upon, quite by accident by our crew. And at this strange moment, in this nondescript patch of pure blue, I observe this entanglement as a sinister, toxic shelter for sea life drifting in a cerulean nether land. It’s like, as one crewmate said of our samples, finding a Twinkie in outer space.

Unfortunately, what we’ve confirmed now, in two separate expeditions, is that the Twinkies are everywhere.

Editor’s Note: This is part 13 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his months-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre and beyond.

Images: Stiv Wilson

The post Twinkies In Outer Space appeared first on EcoSalon.

ExclusiveTouring St. Helena and beyond.

“He died of stomach cancer,” are nearly the first words that come out of our tour guide’s mouth. The guide, a diminutive woman of no more than four and a half feet, is adamant on this point. We’re standing in the drawing room of Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile house on one of the remotest islands in the South Atlantic. After the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was captured by the English and was exiled to St. Helena, one of only three inhabited islands in The South Atlantic Ocean. The Saints, as they are called, maintain that Napoleon’s death at age 51 was of natural causes – not of arsenic poisoning which many of the French believe – in parting, our guide might as well have said, “we really, really, really didn’t kill him…really!”

St. Helena is home to about 5,000 residents most of which live in a small town called Jamestown. This island is rarely visited by tourists, as there is no airport. Leaving or visiting the island means boarding a ship. Supplies come every six weeks by ship from South Africa.

A British Protectorate, St. Helena served as an important resupplying point for The East India Trading company in days of yore. The streets are cobblestone and the architecture British colonial. Just off the key, a mote stands in front of a castle gate that extends across the valley floor to the steep cliff sides that rise on either side of the town. Along the cliffs are decrepit bunkers and batteries used for defending Jamestown from attack. Dying of natural causes or murdered didn’t matter, Napoleon wasn’t going anywhere.

Our crew was on a stop over enroute from Walvis Bay, Namibia on our way across the Atlantic to Montevideo, Uruguay. St. Helena sits about 400 nautical miles directly north of the northeast border of The South Atlantic Gyre, the area where my crew is sailing through to study plastic pollution.

Arriving in the morning, we swam from our ship waiting for customs and immigration to clear us. From the deck I spotted a massive Whale Shark cruising the anchorage. Standing on the bow-sprit of our sailing vessel, Sea Dragon, I could see her speckles, her leviathan, ponderous bulk, wallowing in the clear cerulean water below. Witnessing such creatures in a place known to few on the planet is to enter another dimension, one more like the place a child’s mind manifests when in enthralled in a fantastical storybook.

It’s at these moments nature makes me present, illuminating for me the phantasmagorical industry that she really is, that she wants to be, if we just let her. A degree of respect pays for itself in aesthetic truth and bounty preserved. Conservation itself is an investment in the bank of wonder. For me, everyday on the sea conjures such revelations. It’s truly a gift to be 37-years-old and feel my baseline notion of purity deepening, when many believe the world is or already has gone to shit. 24-hour news cycles be damned. Give me mother ocean, a stiff breeze, dawn and dusk. I will navigate my own way.

I was off to the landfill and to the one beach to look at washed up plastic. Yes, our taxi driver was surprised. There are few taxis on the island and typically they’re only used for tours. There is nowhere else to go than Jamestown. To me, seeing waste from a community of 5,000 people who consume products of the modern world in a limited space is a fascinating enterprise. It’s akin to geneticists studying pure bloodlines of indigenous peoples. Self-reliance and limited space can often make proper waste management not a moral responsibility but a practical need.

The dump was better than many I’ve seen. One of the things I look at as a plastic pollution researcher is how the stuff enters the ocean. Often, island landfills will be situated just adjacent the sea where winds will blow a river of plastic trash out at the same break-neck speed with which humans consume it. St. Helena’s was no different than other islands with regard to how its landfill was sited, but I could tell by how the tree line leaned that the dominant wind was onshore and constant under-tilling of the earth stopped the vast majority of blow-trash from entering the ocean. However, the location was atop of what would be a watershed when the rains came.

It’s a funny concept, burying trash that doesn’t biodegrade. It’s not really going anywhere. There is no “away” in “throwaway” as they say. Living on a small island reminds you of that immediately. The plastic buried here are the dinosaur bones of tomorrow. And to tomorrow the anchor comes up and the quest continues. South America, here I come. How dirty are you?

Editor’s Note: This is part 12 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his months-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre and beyond.
Images: Stiv Wilson

The post Garbage, Saints and Whale Sharks of The South Atlantic appeared first on EcoSalon.

Driving east beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the true terminus of Africa, Cape Agulhas, where the convergence of the Indian and The Atlantic Ocean dance to support untold stories of life and struggle in the ocean – the land of South Africa opens up. For the wild beasts of the continent, roads represent interruptions in natural corridors, obstacles that herd, and grazing animals must transect in order to get to ungrazed lands, water, and mating grounds. The result is a smattering of civilization and wilderness in conflict at times, and wildlife management replaces the natural order.

Now, it is the dry season, and at this time, the few watering holes represent the gathering points for species in the wild. Here there are elephants, hippos, hyena, rhino, zebra, lion, gazelle, cheetah; all the usual suspects that remind me of my youth spent staring at the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom show on TV. A lot has changed since then.

Throughout the countryside, there are game reserves and game parks, the former, similar to national parks in the United States. In national reserves, there is no take, but in other places massive swatches of land are bought up to create the appearance of the wild, where hunters will come to track and kill large game. These areas are all fenced in with electric wire to keep the prized beasts from moving out. European, Arab, and American hunters alike will pay top dollar to kill large beasts. I’m told it costs up to 30k U.S to shoot an elephant. Lions can fetch up to 50k. Animals are specifically bred for this purpose and roam on massive hunting parks where hunters can hire a guide to track animals the old way, and claim their prize with a gun. Exporting of the tusks and such is difficult in the United States but I was told by a taxidermist in Namibia that other than the U.S, taking prizes home from these beasts is not as difficult.

In the Northwest of South Africa, Kruger National Park – the most healthy environment and one private game park, where no hunting is allowed – has emerged as model for restoring things to their natural populations. The place is called, Londolozi, started by the Varty family and is perhaps the most exclusive safari spot in this region. Dave Varty wrote an incredible book about the project entitled The Full Circle. Celebrities visit it often, and accommodation costs 1k per person per day. It is so wild that guests are escorted from their rooms to the dining area, as it’s far too dangerous even amongst the hotel buildings to wander the grounds, especially at night.

For the animals that populate the area, the natural order reigns, and the cruelty of nature is law. The game rangers are selected in Top Gun fashion and undergo a series of very rigorous and dangerous tests to be hired. The park is massive and a prospective ranger is asked to transect it with only a knife – and stay alive amidst some of the biggest predators known to man. If confronted by a lion, the ranger must hold his ground, staring the lion down. I’m told that the lion will often charge and stop, testing the ranger, sometimes up to three times. If it happens a fourth, typically the man is doomed. Another test is meant to teach the ranger the true difficulty of being a predator in the wild. Killing one’s food is one thing, but eating it is another. Many animals will compete for a hunter’s kill, and protecting one’s meal means surviving to the next one. To pass the test, a ranger is given a rifle with three bullets and is asked to hunt and kill an Impala, at least 1.5 kilometers from camp, gut it, and carry it back on his shoulders fending off any competitors. Killing an Impala farther away means more distance to cover. And the smell of fresh kills excites predators for miles upon miles. Night or day, the ranger must return and I was told of one story where a ranger, covered in the animals blood, successfully fended off a pack of Hyena tracking him.

On more of a budget, I traveled to Addo National Elephant Reserve, and took a driving tour with a guide. The herd was over 400 and the reserve was set up to protect the animals from poachers. Elephants were everywhere and would often walk with in feet of our vehicle moving to the next food source – in English, my guide referred to the tree as the Bacon Tree (which to me sounds magical) and told me that elephants can feed up to 22 hours a day in order to survive.

Leaving Africa means another month at sea for me, back to the plastic pollution work and a constant life of discovery. Blessed.

Editor’s Note: This is part 11 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his months-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre and beyond.

Image: flowcomm, Sara&Joachim

The post Africa and The Elephant appeared first on EcoSalon.

On the east side of the Cape of Good Hope is False Bay, so named I presume because ancient mariners rounding her would think they’d gain the passage to the east, when in reality, the terminus of Africa lies just beyond to the east at Cape Aguhlas. From Cape Town, it’s just a short drive to another world of Africa, one that’s beyond the world of humans and wild. I find that writing about this place makes word and phrase choice sound a bit too intrepid or romantic. But that’s what this writer feels at the end of a continent, a place with 60 percent of the biodiversity that’s found throughout it. In short, it’s wild. Yes, at times it’s difficult to get past the disparity, the political and economic residue of apartheid but seeing that, too, reminds one of America’s problems with race and resource distribution, too.

But here there are the penguins. Here there are the baboons. Here are the vast open spaces with exposed rock that’s been beaten by millenia of wind and rain. The microclimates steal the senses, much like San Francisco’s landscape in weather but without the buildings. Here is where two oceans meet. The Atlantic is much colder than the Indian because of a dominant current that skirts the west coast of Africa that originates in the Antarctic. The difference in temperature and salinity makes for upwellings of nutrient rich waters that feed ocean and land animals alike.

Just off the coast are some of the sharkiest waters on the planet, and as we drive we see black flags at beaches with a silhouette of these great creatures, alerting surfers and snorkelers to their presence. The regular road signs alert us to animals that I only have seen in zoos – like baboons, penguins, ostriches – and a deery animal with horns called a Schonbock.

At a beach reserve named Boulders we find the penguins. Hundreds of them walk about, no more than 18-inches high. These are called African Penguins, previously known as the Jackass Penguin because of a donkey-like honk that they make. There are bachelors and bachelorettes alike, as well as several mating pairs. As they go about their business, just watching their awkward terrestrial movements inspires joy. They are some of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my life. As we continue towards land’s end of the Cape of Good Hope, we happen upon a family of baboons along the side of the road. Signs warn travelers not feed them, as doing so makes them accustom to humans as a food source which often ends tragically. A fed baboon is a dead baboon we’re told, and house break ins by the creatures is not uncommon. As we watch from the care window, the dominant male in his majesty keeps look out after his clan, and the babies are playing like children do. They wrestle, they tumble, and on has stolen a flower from the other and is playing keep away with it.

The wind is howling, also a symptom of converging ocean currents. Many ships have foundered on these rocks, the winds blowing them to shore. I myself have gotten lost in South Africa, lost in love with landscape, the people and the complex convergence of the two.

Editor’s Note: This is part 10 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his months-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre and beyond.

Image: stuart001uk

The post The Cape Side of Good Hope appeared first on EcoSalon.

Last night – day eight? nine? – of an epic storm that has held us hostage out here in the South Atlantic, the wind hit 51.7 knots. 50 knots translates to about 60mphs and at that speed the wind is audible. Physical. Like a chorus of shrieking witches, the dark side of nature laughs at you, tossing you about like a toy. You can do nothing but watch the angry ocean, water spraying so fine it pixelates. If I look into the wind, I’ll pay for that luxury; pins and needles of rain burrow into my face, my pores. In a word, it’s awesome. To witness the raw power and force of the ocean in a frenzy is to be audience to the incomprehensible. No human made creation, perhaps with the exception of a nuclear bomb can show such fantastical energy.

At all times, someone must be on deck to watch over our vessel, looking to the horizon for other ships (we are in a shipping lane) and watching to see if the wind swings, increases – anything that might go awry.

I want to write about our research. I want to write the environmental story that we’re making here, but all I can do is talk about the weather. Talk about why humans will expose themselves to such vulnerability for the sake of science. But as I sit here below deck, dry and writing, my mind is distracted by the boat heaving up and down. I’m wishing I could be in my bunk, asleep. All I can think about is my fragile mental state, tired, so tired. Storms never last this long. Yes, I find beauty in watching this power, but to be this physically exhausted makes for an agitated state, one that makes writing, sharing – hell, just being – difficult. And there is no escape. Capetown is weeks away.

But perhaps I can get a bit lost in my words here as I describe the work we are here to do. I will try, enervated as I am; obsessed as I am with the weather.

We sample the ocean every 60 miles or so for plastic pollution. As I’ve noted before, this is the first expedition in the world to ever do so in the South Atlantic, and being a part this crew is exciting. Being a part of a new discovery is an honor. But the glory quickly fades once the sea acts up. The view from deck never changes with the exception of the weather, the clouds, and the moon phases. Each wave is different of course but they come and pass so quickly their shape is never committed to memory. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

Even in these chaotic seas, where the state of the sea drives that which would normally float (plastic) down, we’re still finding more plastic than biomass in our sampling. The deployment and retrieval of the trawl is extremely dangerous. In this world, you don’t want to step to the edge of the boat. Though only six feet off the water, it might as well be the cliffs of Dover. In the space of a few seconds, the deck will rise and fall 20 feet, and that doesn’t account for the tangential, lateral movements, either. During the day, you can watch the ocean, and make your movements on deck based on anticipating what the next wave will do. But at night, mother ocean is a constant mystery. At any moment she can take you down. Hard. You simply don’t take chances. Falling overboard here is certain death.

Turning a ship like this around takes a bit of time, at least a quarter mile, and by then, you’re lost in the dark swells, nothing but a head bobbing from a vantage of infinity. To avoid this, we’re all wearing harnesses and strapped to the deck at all times. We are safe from death by following a strict protocol, but injury is another matter. Even in the time it’s taken to write this, we’ve had a close call. Ten minutes ago, a rogue wave broke over the stern of the ship and took our crew member James, one of the pro surfers, aboard across the deck from the cockpit to the helm, washing him at least 20 feet. Clipped in, he’s alive.

For now, I’m dry below and I am writing my words. And I’m safe from a storm that will not end. But today, I don’t want to end this post here. To end now means to go back to the present moment. The wind. The waves. Prayer for a rising barometer. Prayer for a conversation where we don’t talk about the weather.

The post All We Do Is Talk About the Weather: Day 14 In a Transatlantic Plastic Tale appeared first on EcoSalon.

I’m now just over a week at sea, having left Angra Dos Reis (Anchorage of the Kings), Brazil on November 8th. Our crew is now some 1100 miles out, sampling the ocean for plastic pollution every 60 nautical miles or so. As I sit here, a storm rages outside, and uncharacteristically of the South Atlantic, the wind is coming from the South, not the North, Northwest. We have yet to find the trade winds, which makes our 72 foot sailing vessel heave and ho beyond comfort.

Thus far, we’ve found what we suspected would be in the South Atlantic. Plastic. The gyre, or what is popularly referred to as a ‘garbage patch’ is still about 600 miles from our position, and so far, we’re not finding a prolific amount in our samples yet, but that will most likely change as we get farther into the gyre. The weather will change, too, and we expect very light winds and very calm seas which should reveal the garbage out here in better detail. Big seas tend to hide the plastic, driving it down into the water column.

Chelsea, one of our scientists, is monitoring the water for pollutants and pollutant uptake in virgin plastic that she drags behind the boat. But her most groundbreaking work has proven that pollutants like PCBs, DDT, and PAHs that plastic absorbs in the marine environment can in fact transfer to a fish’s tissue after ingestion. So far, she’s proved this in her lab in San Diego, and is looking to repeat the experiment with samples taken from the field. In our case, that’s the middle of the ocean. The possible ramifications of this notion are startling. Throughout a predator fish’s life, she’ll eat thousands of fish, and if each one is polluted, that amount of pollution will biomagnify throughout the predator fish’s life. If that predator is say, tuna, and you’re eating a some sashimi with friends – well, you see where this is going.

Personalities and Killing Fish

It’s actually kind of funny, this crew; as is typical of our expeditions, we take a very diverse group of people and personalities in order to share different perspectives on this issue as we conduct outreach once we’re back home. But out here, what I love is that each person tends to approach the same moment or experience, differently. There’s Jody, our filmmaker, who barks in romantic Moby Dick Captain Ahab-isms and caught a fish yesterday. He had a fairly sizable Dorado (Mahi-Mahi) on the line, and he swore like a 19th century pirate in verse, excited by the ‘fight with the watery beast from dimensions that excite the imagination’ as he pulled it to the boat.

Meanwhile the scene is complimented by a just-awake Chelsea, who is pulling out a clipboard and donning latex gloves methodically in order to collect the liver and stomach of the fish for her research. Then you have Dale, the first mate Kiwi, who is verbally abusing me at the helm (when a fish gets on the line, you want to slow or stop the boat) the whole time this is happening. After we land it, he repeatedly and savagely stabs the fish in the head  (“die you c#nt bastard!”) trying to get the thing to die quickly. The constant vulgar barrage of words from Dale’s mouth towards me and the fish is essentially New Zealandish for “hey guy, I actually really like you.” (Special note here – if a Kiwi isn’t giving you an exceedingly large amount of crap, he doesn’t care for you – verbal abuse where he comes from is tantamount to a term of endearment.)

Then you have Rich, the Santa Cruz warrior poet who will look at the whole spiritual side of taking an animal’s life for food, and he’ll be respectfully thanking the animal for providing us with a meal. Also on the scene is the pro surfer from SoCal, Mary Osborne, videotaping the whole drama with an astonished or horrified look on her face, not used to this sort of primal ritual splayed out in front of her. As well, you have Anna, deeply saddened by the whole escapade, sensitive to the butchery in front of her.

What I love about being here, in the middle of nowhere, crammed into a tiny ship for a month is the purity of spirit that emerges in everyone sharing the experience. To be at sea for 30 days is no easy thing, and you’re counting on the people you’re with to keep you happy, healthy and alive. That interdependency is sublime. Yes, we’re all on an environmental mission, doing some crucial work, but there are a lots of hours in the day in which to play. Joke. Be. Kill fish. This precisely is why the sea calls to me and why I care for her health so. It’s why I’m here.

The post To Catch Plastic and To Kill a Fish appeared first on EcoSalon.