After a journey that was punctuated by storms and unfavorable wind directions, the 5 Gyres crew arrived in Cape Town, South Africa. 31 days, 4100 nautical miles and plastic all the way.

But I am proud. No one has ever explored the South Atlantic Gyre for plastic pollution before. We never batted an eye at the cost incurred when sailing 13 people across an ocean. We believed, we found the resources, we executed. We made it. 67 samples taken every 60 nautical miles all positive for what has become the vomit of land upon our blue planet: plastic. It is of course a bittersweet accomplishment. Acrid because we found what we anticipated what would be there, sweet because we have the data to prove it. We have the assets now to show the world that this human born problem is global. It is an issue that not only affects the environment, but also the quality and standard of living for all beings on earth.

Driving north of Cape Town, we see the residue of apartheid, the slums of Langa and Gugulethu. There it is again, strewn on razor wire, crammed between the corrugated tin shanties, piled and discarded, the ubiquitous calling card of convenience: plastic. It is the alpha land of the sea’s omega. Full circle.

Land ho. Security is ever present in Cape Town, especially in places like ritzy harbors. The approach was hairy: fog, darkness and 50 ships all converging for safe haven on the Cape Of Good Hope. My first walk on land in 31 days was difficult. After so much time at sea the leg muscles tend to atrophy a bit. I couldn’t walk straight. We arrived late – just after 2 a.m. local time trumpeted only by the bark of resident fur seals. But attempting to stroll, wanting for the smell of green flora, I was approached by security. From all appearances, my gait was that of a drunk. Attempting to explain my extreme sobriety of a month without alcohol was fruitless. I was raw, dirty with an unkempt beard – hell I hadn’t worn shoes in twenty days! I was asked to return to my ship. Politics, civil code – land life all set in. I had arrived.

We are docked in front if the Two Oceans Aquarium where we’ve held press events and public education forums. Here we have a bit of celebrity. It’s exciting. I like that the 5 gyres directors are the front (wo)men. I do not like the camera from the other side, but I do like documenting worthy people. My role is perfect here – all I want in my heart is for everyone to see and feel what I saw. Understand the complexity and scale of the issue. The speed by which it worsens. The horror that it wreaks. But also the hope I carry that the problem can and will be solved. It may not be solved by us, but we are laying a foundation that will empower this and the next generation. Life feels good when you think these kinds of things.

And life feels better when you remember why you fight. About a week before we landed, we cruised with a Minke Whale. She found our ship and swam along side, not more than 200 feet from us, breaching and sailing along with us at the same speed. She must have been with us for a half hour at least. Dolphins encounters bring glee to the crew, whales bring ecstasy. Joy.

A Minke is a Baleen whale which means it filters water for food constantly with its mouth. The device by which we scour the ocean for plastic is 25 by 60 centimeters wide, deployed for an hour over about one nautical mile. And every time we have a handful of plastic. Now take a 35 foot whale’s mouth sifting like we are but always, always, always. There is evil math in that. Ugly math.

But though the equation gives us pause, the Minke’s inspire us to keep sailing and attempt to help give the earth back what she deserves: dignity.

Editor’s Note: This is part 7 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his month-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre.

Images: Stiv Wilson

The post Arrival In Cape Town appeared first on EcoSalon.

With just over 700 nautical miles to go before landfall, the worst of the large debris appears to be behind us. Still, we’re pulling up plastic in every sample, though the amounts have dropped off somewhat. It confirms our hypothesis of where the densest plastic pollution should be located. Slowly, we’re sailing out of the South Atlantic Gyre. We’ve been becalmed for several days, only getting a few bursts of speed from sporadic winds. For days, the motor, which we refer to as the donkey, has been chugging away scratching longitude for us eastward. We’re nearly out of fuel and on a sailboat, there is no fuel gauge. We’ll need to kill the donkey at some point and wait until the wind comes.

Sailors never wish for wind, as you don’t know what you might get. Scientists are practical, objective, methodical. Sailors are not. Sailors are a superstitious lot, and it’s been comical to see the mix of different personalities coalesce on this voyage. Sailors don’t leave on Friday; they avoid the color green, bananas and women onboard. Scientists ask sailors, “Why?” Sailors say, “I don’t know, you just don’t.”

For the most part, our science work is over and we’ve been spending the last week scripting a short documentary and making sure we have all the photos we need to portray our story clearly to the public. We’ve also been conducting crew interviews. And more swimming with garbage when we come across it. There’s no experience quite like watching half-deteriorated plastic garbage floating by. It’s so dispersed, but occasionally you’ll come across concentrations of plastic pollution, tangled together, some of it recognizable, some of it not. At first glimpse the ocean doesn’t really look polluted in many areas, but once one investigates a bit deeper, sieving the cerulean blue, the stain is revealed.

It’s our job to document it. When swimming, we take our photographers and filmmakers into the water, in an attempt to get assets that show just how incongruent plastic floating thousands and thousands of miles from land at random is. Frankly, it’s just plain bizarre. Aesthetically, it’s the only thing unnatural out here.

The last stretch homeward is bittersweet. We’re not even navigating anymore. We’re heading almost due east, and bearing 97 degrees, a course that will take us straight into Capetown.

Over the past month, traveling some 4,100 nautical miles, we’ve discovered what we thought we would – plastic, ever present. But finding it is no less of a blow to our collective hearts simply because we hypothesized it. Seeing environmental degradation of this magnitude (the distance we’ve traveled is roughly 1/5th of the way around the world), everyday, for over 30 days isn’t easy on the spirit.

In five days time we’ll reach land, docking at The Two Oceans Aquarium where we’ll hold media events, public outreach/education events and ultimately present to public our findings as well as let interested people tour our ship.

Arrival is bittersweet, as part of me yearns for land and the other part loves to be out here – the simplicity, the beauty, the self-reliance and community. But it’s also the not knowing where your keys, or phone, or wallet is – and not caring. Just as I’m writing these words, I hear, “Whale!” shouted from up on deck. I run up the gangway; not 30-feet off our starboard beam is a minke whale, about 35-feet just cruising with us at our exact boat speed. The water is so clear we can see the outline of her under the water, and then slowly, the head rises, thar she blows, then the sharp, unmistakable dorsal fin before she drops below again. For twenty minutes, she swims along side our vessel, not 50-feet away. Then, just as she disappears, our fishing line zings and we’ve got a 25-pound tuna on. Sashimi.

In a month, I’ll return to the ocean for another month at sea, studying another transect of the gyre, to gain a bigger, better picture of the pollution we’ve now come to call common. Somewhere in this kind of life is the key to solving the environmental nightmare we study.

Out here our lives waste not, want not.

Editor’s Note: This is part 6 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his month-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre.

Images: 5 Gyres and Jody Lemmon

The post Wanting for Wastelands appeared first on EcoSalon.

At long last, the weather is good. After enduring a storm that has tested my physical and mental endurance beyond any limit I’ve previously experienced, the 5 Gyres crew has awoken to calm seas and brilliant sunshine. The longest I’ve been caught in a storm at sea is 72 hours, and this one raged for nearly 10 days. Ten days of serious weather that shreds sails and makes instruments fail feels like an infinity of time marinating in the worst of what nature can manifest. Your mind keeps telling you it will pass, but as you shiver, and shots of adrenaline whip through the body, you don’t know when. You can’t. Weather forecast information tuned to our position at sea is highly accurate for the first 24 hours, but gets progressively inaccurate by degrees for each 24 hour period beyond that. If we were just sailing we’d sail away from this horror, but we can’t; we need to stay put so we can get our sample at our intended mark. (Our goal is to get a 50 sample transect all the way across.)

Like a promise kept, the storm has passed and it looks like the high pressure system we’ve craved has stabilized. Now, it’s all sunshine and calm waters. We’ve arrived – the eye of the gyre in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Until now we’ve been chasing an invisible mark in the ocean, a coordinate conjured from a computer model generated by 5 Gyres scientific advisor, Dr. Nikolai Maximenko. The mark is near the center of the gyre, known as the “accumulation zone” where the densest plastic pollution should reside.

With the sea calm, the ocean is beginning to show us our human synthetic stain, just where Maximenko predicted. All day crew spotting for garbage on deck have been yelling out sightings or large flotsam to our port and starboard. Beyond the universal plastic fragments found in our samples, we’re now seeing macro plastic pollution: laundry baskets, hard hats, ghost nets, pieces of air conditioner housings, and indiscriminate, half chewed (by fish) plastic garbage.

To capture this garbage is a difficult. Because we’re in a sailboat, we need a coordinated effort to slow the ship down in time to scoop the larger pieces of plastic pollution from the ocean. Typically at the bow we have a first spotter, someone who yells commands back to second spotter amidships, who then relies the commands to the skipper to steer Sea Dragon (our ship) alongside the trash so that the crew, armed with landing nets, can scoop it up. We don’t study the macro plastic garbage, but we collect it for education purposes and also document it with still photography and video in order to educate the public when we’re back on terra firma.

It feels like an organized hunt, but the kill makes us sick. Though we’re on a voyage of discovery, exploring a never-before-studied gyre for plastic pollution, I knew the garbage would be here. Unfortunately, I know from past experience. I’d have been shocked if we didn’t find anything.

And here, like everywhere in our oceanic gyres, it’s dense. Every few minutes we spot another piece. Maybe it’s a bucket, maybe it’s a water bottle – but what else? What might be an 1/8 of a mile to the north, or to the south? Or, or, or…even as a speck of machinery traveling through a massive space, we still just “happen upon it”, ubiquitous and sinister.

Finding a denser spot, we drop sail and get in the water to investigate. Underneath, you often find life beginning to colonize the plastic trash. Today, we observed crabs and fish calling the left side of an air conditioner unit home. It’s heart breaking, particularly in light of our recent findings about chemicals and plastic.

We swan dive into 5,000 feet of the clearest azure water you’ve ever seen – safe from the floating debris. It is a surreal experience. Even in the calm, the current is strong and one most swim fairly hard to keep up with the boat. Getting the photo and video assets are important, but making sure one doesn’t lose the boat is always in the back of the mind. After all, the garbage is near and familiar, but land is still 1,500 miles away.

Editor’s Note: This is part 5 in a special series. Voyage with Stiv and catch the exclusive each week here at EcoSalon during his month-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre.

The post The Eye of the Gyre 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.

Still, poor weather persists. Isn’t it supposed to be the onset of summer? Last night on watch, Marcus, Chelsea, Mike and Anna experienced heaving seas, sideways rain and wind gusts over 30 knots. By the time Bonnie, Rich, Mary, Max and I got on watch, conditions had eased a bit, but the wind drives into the noon hour.

We’ve been in the mid-twenties ever since leaving Brazil. As we gain longitude eastward, conditions should improve. But right now, we’re confronted by low pressure systems spinning around Cape Horn and after 72 hours of this, the crew is ready for some sun and some organized seas.

With this wind, we could be in Capetown within a couple of weeks. But of course, this isn’t a race. We’re sampling every 50 miles for plastic pollution, but with these messy sea states, getting good samples is difficult. The plastic that floats is not neutrally buoyant, but it’s close, so when sea state goes up, plastic is driven down into the water column. Best case conditions are calmer, flatter seas for a more accurate picture of density. When the wind goes over 25 knots and the seas get ugly, we cease sampling, and either hove-to (a technique in sailing where the sails are backed to keep the nose into the wind, but slow down the boat’s progress), or sail in the opposite direction having marked the next sampling area, turning around to find it again when the weather has passed.

After about 10 more samples, we should be getting into the high pressure for quite some time until conditions will most likely worsen as we approach Africa. It’s important to keep from getting a gap in our data because this expedition is the first ever to sample this area of planet earth, and much like how Algalita’s work in the North Pacific was the impetus for Scripps to conduct work there, it’s our hope that our work here will inspire oceanographers the world over to concentrate not just on the northern hemisphere, but understand that this issue of plastic pollution is global.

For the few trawls that we have conducted, it’s clear that plastic is an issue here, too, even though we’ve yet to reach the accumulation zones, i.e. the gyre. Each gyre has its own DNA of garbage and we’re interested to see what Africa and South America’s offerings will be. We’re also wondering if it will be denser or lighter based on several vectors. How will lower GDP of countries affect their garbage impact on the ocean? How many watersheds contribute? What kind of plastic pollution will see? Will lack of waste management infrastructure for processing plastic affecting how much gets dumped? It all remains to be seen.

From the sailing side of things, we have yet to repair the mainsail as the sea is too choppy to get the sewing machine on deck or trust ourselves with large needles doing careful work. For now, we sail with the smaller staysail and the big Yankee. Or Jenny, as it’s called in the States.

The crew that’s been battling seasickness seems to finally be getting the upper hand on it. That’s good news. No more misery. Soon, we’ll all be enjoying enforceable mid afternoon dance parties aboard sea dragon.

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The team assembled, we’re making last minute preparations for our month-long journey into the heart of the South Atlantic Gyre. In total, we’ll spend some 30 days at sea looking to discover (or hopefully not) the South Atlantic Garbage Patch. Yesterday, we shot press images of our team in a bay at Ihle Grande, one of the most beautiful places this writer has ever seen. Taking a quick ferry around the island, we searched for waves with pro surfers Mary Osborne and James Pribram, two 5 Gyres ambassadors looking to spread the word about plastic pollution to the surfing community when they return.

Hiking up through the jungle, then down, on a path that would be a nightmare if it started to rain, we found a wide open beach with pure clean water and beautiful waves. It was my job to get photos of them, but for this surfer, there are few things on earth harder than watching people having a blast while surfing. Soon, I got my shots, and had a go.

We awoke to a beautiful morning of clouds over the stiff jungle peaks and readied the boat for our trip to Angre Dos Reis (anchorage of the gods) where we’ll pass immigration, fuel up, and do last minute fresh food shopping. Fresh food will be a distant memory in a week’s time, as very little survives in a hot, salty climate for a length of time.

This will be my longest journey at sea; some four or more weeks without land, a reality that both worries and excites me. Our team is dynamic, heavy on science, activism, and pro athletes with great networks for the cause. We’ve got events scheduled on the other side with the South Africa press, and we’re hoping for strong media attention. Our mission is to demonstrate that this is a global problem, not something that just exists in the North Pacific.

Here we go.

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