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.

The rains coming in mean bad news. In Gugulethu, the shanties here are on dirt and when the water comes, this equals mud. But even though the rain has poured during what is typically the dry season, people are out and about preparing for the Christmas tradition. Here, there are no gifts. No decorations. No blinking lights or packed car parks. The “better off” people of this area are buying live chickens and preparing Christmas meals. What characterizes the holiday is open doors and closed doors. A closed door means you have nothing to offer in the way of food to passersby. An open door means anyone can come in for a snack. Children roam the dirt and mud corridors, going from door to door, stuffing their faces with good eats. When they get full, they put food in their bags and carry on. It’s like a like a savory U.S. Halloween with no ghosts.

This was how Laura, our guide described Christmas tradition. But as we drove with her, the meta-stories turned more personal. Though she’s what anyone would call a survivor – educated, powerful and kind – she’s had a tough year. Many in her family have died from all sorts of ailments and she’s been looking after a ten-year-old girl with HIV whose parents passed away earlier in the year. The child doesn’t know she has HIV and her parents made Laura promise she would not tell her. The girl takes anti-retro viral drugs but is told that the drugs are for asthma. What concerns Laura is that the girl is looking to start drinking and when drinking happens with women, it means sex. Yes, we’re talking about a ten-year-old girl. Many are mothers by 13 and 14, and eager boys will use inebriation to initiate sex with their young counterparts. Laura is concerned about the HIV and doesn’t know what to do. She’s concerned about the girl drinking and having sex too, but much is out of her power. Drugs and alcohol are big problems in the slums.

The men are the ones who typically drink. They brew a crude beer there and spend the days drinking it. With so much unemployment, there is little else to do. Meth is an issue and so is something new: Smoking anti retro viral drugs. The HIV medication is so plentiful and cheap here that apparently one can smoke it and get a crack-like high. The come down, I’m told, is extremely painful and thus the drugs used this way are highly, highly addictive. But again, Laura invites to look at the good things we see – the children laughing, the young girl playing a game called Puca which involved drawing a circle and placing stones inside it. The goal is to throw one stone in the air and remove one from the circle before the stone is then caught with the same hand. Once all stones are out of the circle, they replaced in the same but opposite fashion. If successful without dropping the thrown stone, the player wins. Imagination holds children’s minds here – there are almost no books (the pages of books are often used as toilet paper), and definitely no soccer fields. The family dwellings are squatted illegally, but no one kicks anyone out. There is nowhere for them to go. Power is supplied but there is no plumbing. Several families share what amounts to a stone outhouse with a bucket. Once a week, if they are lucky, a service comes round and empties the bucket. With the sun beating during our visit, the evidence of too many people sharing the same bathroom lingers thick in the air.

On the outskirts of Gugulethu, just before a Muslim camp, we come across a circumcision shanty situated between the freeway and the off ramp. When boys are 18 they are sent here to be circumcised without anesthesia as part of a ritual into manhood. The shanty amounts to what look like several igloo shapes, only made of old tarps and plastic bags. They are hot and dirty and unsanitary. Laura explains that many boys get infections from the procedure.

But there are no hospitals. Well, there are, kind of, but ordinary people can’t walk into them and be treated. One hospital serves two million on the outskirts of Cape Town and I’m told that people fear it as it is a place where you go to die. There has been some aid from Doctors Without Borders, but two million people is a lot. Much of the resources that would go to help people here are cutoff by corruption in government. Corruption happens at a very low level and as soon as someone gains a bit of power, he looks to siphon money from aid. There are crackdowns occasionally, but officials are rarely, if ever, prosecuted.

As Laura drives us back into the colored and white part of Cape Town, we see the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping by those who can afford to do it. We’re getting dropped off at The Two Oceans Aquarium and I’m talking about the work on pollution that 5 Gyres does; we have a display we have at the aquarium. Laura mentions that she’s never been to an aquarium. When she says this, I can’t believe it. She’s educated, she’s a home owner, she makes a living. But the stigma things such as aquariums being for people other than her is pervasive. I tell Laura to park the car and come in with me. She’s like a child in a candy store looking at the sharks. She’s amazed. She’s heard about these creatures but has never seen them. We are together and still worlds apart.

Merry Christmas Laura. You’re an inspiration to the world you serve. And beyond.

Editor’s Note: This is part 9 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 Christmas in the Slums of Gugulethu: Part 2 appeared first on EcoSalon.

I travel the world looking at garbage. Plastic garbage. This is my job. Our NGO quantifies plastic density in the oceanic gyres, but because all would-be plastic patches are land born, we study garbage wherever we can. When I arrive in a new country, I’m keen to investigate waste management infrastructure because I believe, as does our organization, that pollution is a symptom of poverty and poverty is a symptom of pollution. Environmental catastrophes are created by humans and require solutions that have a positive effect on human quality of life. This is my mantra.

Cape Town is an extremely diverse and complex city. Eleven different languages are spoken in South Africa, and the population is composed of African blacks, whites and “colored.” Colored has a different meaning here – it denotes being of non African descent and of mixed race. It’s not derogatory. Coloreds speak Afrikaans and English as do Whites – for the most part. Blacks speak several languages including Xhosa, the language of Nelson Mandela and this the language we hear in the slum villages. But language can change from block to block at times. Many of the the coloreds are of Malaysian slave descent and comprise the Muslim community and some of their communities are within a stones throw of the shanty towns, though the two cultures rarely, if ever, mix in the townships. Affluent blacks, whites and coloreds do mix in the higher income parts of the city, as well as in the workplace and in politics.

What characterizes any metropolis in South Africa is this shantytown slum situation on the outskirts of the city. It’s quite possible to go from Dolce and Gabbana to abject dirt floor subsistence squatting in tin shacks within a five minute drive. America is very good at making poverty invisible, but here, squatter villages line the highways and are the first thing a traveler is confronted with driving from the airport into the city.

Cape Town in general has security issues – mainly theft rather than violent crime (but confrontational robberies are not uncommon) which is to be expected when have nots live close to haves. As a white person, it is unwise to go into the shanties without a guide. But I was not content to see these places from locked car doors at fifty miles an hour.

Laura the Amazing.

We met Laura outside of a ritzy shopping center in the money part of Cape Town. She grew up in the townships (slums) and was lucky enough to get a scholarship for a university education. Laura has been guiding for over a decade. Her presence commands respect and she has an exceptional power and charm that exudes from her being. For 350 rand, about $50 US, she agreed to show us around the townships. This is how she makes a living. And some of the money goes to support a breakfast program she runs out of her house to feed children before school. No school means no free breakfast and the incentive is enough get kids motivated. As she sees it, the only way to break the cycle of AIDS and poverty is through education – 60 percent of blacks are unemployed and there are 9 million people that have HIV (that have been tested) in South Africa – that’s about 1 in 5.

At first, Laura was trying to figure out what we could handle. We explained that we worked for an NGO on pollution issues and said that we didn’t want the sanitized tour. As I sat in the front seat of her white Mercedes driving north, she started explaining all that we would see. Her knowledge of her country, it’s complexities, issues and histories were out of this world. School was in session as I feverishly took notes on my iPhone as we drove.

Langa was our first township. We entered a typical apartment shared by three families. Three twin beds in a single room, windows without glass, exposed wires and heaps of garbage outside. Residents here pay 20 rand a month (about three dollars) to rent these places. Everything is dirty but the tap water is clean. Though meager, an exceptional amount of care is taken in the dwellings. Beds are made and the floor is swept. But the close quarters make for hard relations – sex for example – sex is something that often occurs in front of children, or as Laura describes it, “they are witness to deeds that exceed their tender years.” Typical motherhood occurs at 14-16. HIV is a major problem and as Laura says, “We bury 100 people every Saturday.” But she’s quick to say it’s not all doom and gloom. Twenty years ago the beating of women and child molestation were common practices. But now, there are legal consequences for such actions, an improvement made from having women in political power. Still, the poverty is pervasive and most here subsist on 500 rands a month ($70) or less. In order to be considered a “worker” by a bank, a family must make ten times that a month. Then, credit and things such as a mortgage becomes possible. For most families here, this not an achievable goal any time soon. But what’s dominant here, beyond the plastic garbage and dirt, are the smiles of children – something that is beautiful anywhere in the world.

Part Two – Christmas in a squatter’s camp.

Editor’s Note: This is part 8 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 The Slums of Cape Town: Part 1 appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.