I Sea Change: Youth Action Island Summit with Jack Johnson

 Posted from the Island School, August 30 2015

I Sea Change: Youth Action Island Summit with Jack Johnson from The Island School on Vimeo.

The Youth Island Action Summit was a collaborative effort between The Island School, The Cape Eleuthera Institute, Center for Sustainable Development, The Deep Creek Middle School, The 5 Gyres Institute and All at Once. These organizations partnered to bring together activists, artist, scientists, educators and Bahamian youth to explore and generate solutions to plastic pollution for islands and nations around the world. 

In addition to the Youth Island Action Summit, The Island School had the opportunity to host UNEP as they officially awarded Jack Johnson with the Goodwill Ambassador title for his work as philanthropist and advocate for the oceans.

A Love Story on Midway Island

Posted in Outside Blog Thursday, June 14, 2012 By Adventure Lab

 Midway Atoll is a 2.4-square-mile atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with three islands covering 1,549 acres. It's small, remote, and an essential landing strip for giant seabirds. More than three million of them plop down on the islands every year, which means it's crowded, especially when the birds decide to lay their eggs. Virtually every square foot has a nest.

Three species of albatross, of which the most prominent is the Laysan albatross—with 450,000 nesting pairs, take up space on the island every winter. Laysans are big birds, with roughly six-foot wingspans. They stay, more or less, for nine months. They are monogamous, for the most part, and can live for up to 40 years. After the pairs land in October or November, they spend some time dancing and clicking and deciding on a nest before laying an egg. The male and female take turns incubating the egg for about two months, fly off on a series of epic journeys to find food for their young over the course of four or five months, and then leave the youngsters alone so they can fledge in June or July.

Photographer and filmmaker Chris Jordan stepped into this scene—carefully, of course—and stayed for a couple weeks. It affected him in a profound way. That's because, as you've probably heard and seen, a lot of the chicks die with large amounts of plastic in their stomachs. Their parents inadvertently scoop up the debris while feeding on squid and other fish at the top of the Pacific Ocean, and regurgitate the plastic into the youngsters' mouths. Eventually, Jordan decided to make a movie called Midway, and he wants to go back. He's hoping to raise $100,000 on Kickstarter to finish his project. We checked in with him to find out a little bit more about his motivation.

Laysan albatross and chick. Photo: Chris Jordan

Do you have a favorite photograph of an albatross chick?The two weeks we spent photographing the hatching chicks on Midway was one of the most beautiful experiences of my whole life. The mother albatrosses allowed us so close to their hatching babies that in one case, my lens was right in the nest and the mother’s wing was resting on my head.

 

Laysan albatross and chick. Photo: Chris Jordan

Albatrosses are as big as eagles, with powerful beaks that could rip your face off if they decided to. But they trusted us to come literally within a few inches of their hatching babies with our cameras, displaying an elegance and grace that was incredible to behold. I will never forget the intimacy of that experience.

Laysan albatross and chick. Photo: Chris Jordan

Was there a specific moment when you decided to make the film?
The moment I knew I had to push deeper into the story of Midway was when I was visiting a girls’ school in Brisbane, Australia, showing my photographs of the plastic-filled birds. At the end of my talk, one of the teachers broke down weeping in front of her whole school. I stood there frozen, with my heart breaking, as tears poured down her face and her voice shook with horror and grief, and she asked me “How do we get to hope from here?” Her question resonated for me like a temple bell on so many levels, and I didn’t have an answer. I think maybe that’s a question we are all holding right now, as the news about the health of our world gets worse every day, and our leaders become more and more lost and paralyzed. I knew I had to go back to Midway and stand in the fire of that question until I had something to offer that teacher. The result has been a three-year project that has changed my life at the very core. 

What have scientists told you about what the plastic does to the Albatross chicks?
That is complex because albatross chicks have a high natural mortality rate, and it is difficult to determine in a particular case whether a chick died from plastic or from other causes. For example, if two parent albatrosses leave their nest for five days in search of food, their chick may be subjected to dehydrating heat, or rain storms that cause hypothermia. If the baby dies during that time, who can say what was the exact cause of death, and whether the 22 plastic bottle caps in its stomach had a contributing effect? All that can be said with certainty is that the plastic is increasing the mortality of the albatross chicks by an unknown factor.

But personally, I am not so much interested in saving the albatross as I am in receiving the urgent alarm signal they are sending us about the state of our world. The birds on Midway are like messengers, the canary in the coal mine. When the canary dies, the miners don’t run over and try to save the canary— they receive the message that bird just gave its life delivering, and then act quickly to save themselves. That approach resonates with me because it doesn’t view the birds as helpless victims that we passively observe; it places a duty on us to receive their message, and be changed by it (or not). 

What do you hope the end result of the movie will be?
I believe the story of Midway Island offers a profound metaphor for our time, like an epic piece of literature that carries symbolism and archetype on multiple levels. A lot of smart people are saying that what humanity needs right now is a shift in our story, and my own theory is that we need a new love story—a real one that we can believe in, and that includes us all. First-world culture has lost its connection with a deeply felt reverence for the miracle of our life, and for our sacred place in the great mystery. Being on Pihemanu (the Hawaiian name for Midway) is like standing on a razor’s edge between darkness and light, paradise and hell, the past and the future; it is a focused microcosm of our world, where horror meets innocence, grief meets joy, birth meets death, all wrapped in an envelope of violent history and stunning natural beauty that overwhelms the senses and transforms the mind. I don’t hold any specific hopes for the end result of my project; my fiduciary duty runs to the story itself, and I consider it my job to honor that story with the highest quality piece of visual poetry that can be achieved with the resources I have available to me. And once I tell that story, my role is done, and that is where the viewer’s responsibility begins.

For more on the Midway Film Project by Chris Jordan, check out Kickstarter.

H/T: @Revkin
 —Joe Spring
@joespring
facebook.com/joespring.1

The beach of shame…

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Tim Silverwood

Since being involved in the marine debris issue a couple of years ago I became aware of a specific beach in Hawai’i that was reported to be bombarded with trash from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre aka…the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The notorious site is Kamilo Beach. This was the first stop on my Great Pacific Shame project earlier this week.

Yes it really is as bad as they say…

‘Seas of Shame’ first aired in a special 60 Minutes report on Channel Nine back in July 2008. It was a revolutionary story for most Australians eating dinner in front of the telly on a Sunday night, not many had heard of marine debris and not many knew of the mysterious Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Three years after it aired here I was bouncing down the same bumpy trail to Kamilo with the same two people instrumental in having the story told, Suzanne Frazer and Dean Otsuki founders of Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawai’i (www.b-e-a-c-h.org).

The incredibly devoted founders of B.E.A.C.H, Dean Otsuki and Suzanne Frazer

Kamilo Beach lies on the southern-most tip of the Big Island of Hawai’i and hence…is the southern-most point of the entire United States. It is remote and difficult to access, ideally it should be spotlessly clean…it isn’t.

We’d timed our arrival to coincide with a high tide…Suzanne, knowing I was departing for the sailing trip to the N. Pacific Gyre in a week wanted to show me the infamous plastic ‘confetti’ here as it touches land. Within moments of stopping the car I had the underwater camera filming tiny plastic shards splashing into the volcanic rock, I was seeing debris from the North Pacific Gyre for the first time, this was garbage patch trash.

Pretty? Think again..

The shoreline was caked with larger items of debris including huge conglomerates of fishing net mixed with abandoned rope. Everything was plastic – plastic bottles were rife (most of which were in a very brittle state – a sign of the effects of photo degradation where sunlight causes them to turn brittle and break into tiny pieces). So many of the broken items showed evidence of bite marks – some tiny nibbles – some larger, an attempt to swallow the object whole perhaps.

Seeing the shoreline awash with trash was a heartbreaking site despite my knowledge and mental preparation of what I expected to see. The thing I found most challenging was the plastic ‘sand’. I’d seen photographs and heard of the tiny brightly coloured shards of plastic replacing the sand but nothing prepared me for the sheer quantity and the way it infiltrated every corner of the beach. In one case we collected two bags of confetti by simply burying hands into crevasses in between rocks – there must be billions on this beach alone.

Care was taken to wear gloves at all times to avoid being poisoned by the toxins that are reported to be super-concentrated on marine debris from this area. DDT, DDE and PCB – all banned toxins – are known to be absorbed into plastic debris, likened to a sponge taking in water. The longer the items are there – the more toxins likely to be attached. We found an intact fishing crate with some coral growing on it – a sign it has been floating at sea for around 7 years according to Suzanne. If it has been there that long and is in tact – how long has the confetti been there? The plot doesn’t play out very nicely for the species who are nibbling and swallowing this toxic laden detritus – wait a minute, don’t we eat fish?

The experience put the problem of marine debris into a bleak perspective for me – and I haven’t even reached the Gyre yet. My mind is spinning about how we can all come together to deal with so much of it. It’s ironic that here I am on a global mission to raise awareness of marine debris yet I hail from a part of the world where marine debris is predominantly consumer waste that has escaped our (possibly weak) clutches to seek out a malicious life on the wild sea.

The beauty of Take 3 is that we can put an end to consumer waste entering the sea by simply picking it up off the land before it gets there and being more mindful of our use and abuse of plastic. But Kamilo Beach has REAL marine debris, stuff that has been swirling and circulating the ocean for years or decades: oyster pipes from Japan, eel traps from Korea, consumer goods from the USA – this is the challenge.

Any negative thoughts I developed after seeing Kamilo were quickly quashed by the energy of Suzanne and Dean – a couple who will never say never. Their campaign to save the oceans and humanity from marine debris is full of hope. They know that people can make a difference – they’ve cleaned and cleaned, engaged the community and completely transformed beaches on Oahu previously abandoned by beachgoers due to debris.

Despite filling every little nook and cranny (and roof) of the SUV with debris including over 150kg of rope and net over the two days we camped out the beach was still choked. On the drive out you could see Suzanne was upset that she lives so far away and couldn’t do more on this occasion – you get the impression if she had time she would literally clean that beach until it was spotless with her own two hands. A sign nailed to a tree brought a smile to her face though – a child’s drawing with the simple words, “Please look after our ocean”. Kamilo’s notoriety is bringing people together and the clean up will go on.

Our bounty…3 people, around 8 hours of work. If we all pitch in we CAN make a difference.
Check out the work B-E-A-C-H does here. Support them if you’re able.

Plastic Particles Circulating Endlessly in World's Oceans

published March 2011 by Ferris Jabr in IPS news

HONOLULU, Hawaii, U.S., Mar 24, 2011 (IPS) - That plastic bottle or plastic take-away coffee lid that has 20 minutes of use can spend decades killing countless seabirds, marine animals and fish, experts reported here this week.

On remote Pacific island atolls, diligent albatross parents unknowingly fill their chicks' bellies with bits of plastic that resemble food. The chicks die of malnutrition, and when their bodies decay all those plastic bottle tops, disposable lighters, and the ubiquitous bits of plastic detritus get back into the environment in a cruel perversion of 'recycling'.

There is now so much plastic in the oceans it is likely that virtually every seabird has plastic in its belly if its feeding habits mean it mistakes plastic bits for food. The same is true for sea turtles, marine animals or fish, experts say.

Northern fulmars, a common seabird numbering in the millions, have a collective 45 tonnes worth of plastic bits in their bellies, estimates Jan Andries van Franeker, a biologist with the Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies at the University of Wageningen in Holland.

At least 95 percent of fulmars in the North Sea where van Franeker has been working for three decades have one to several dozen bits of plastic in their stomachs. The same is true for related species like the tiny Wilson's storm petrels, which unknowingly transport an estimated 35 tonnes of plastic from their wintering grounds in the North Atlantic to breeding grounds in the Antarctic, he says.

"If a seabird's feeding habits mean it could mistake plastic for food, then it will likely have plastic in its stomach," he said in an interview at the weeklong Fifth International Marine Debris Conference, which ends Friday in Honolulu, Hawaii.

It has been 10 years since the last international marine debris conference and the hope is that industry, civil society, researchers and policy makers will find common ground on the strategies and best practices to assess, reduce, and prevent the impacts of marine debris. "I sometimes have this kind of dream or nightmare where those fulmars drop all of that plastic on an audience in big conference room like this," van Franeker told IPS. "It would make a very clear statement."

It is a statement that needs to be made with the escalating problem of the world's oceans being filled a staggering amount of plastic, fishing gear, and all other kinds of debris. There is no accurate accounting of exactly how much but it appears to be in the tens of millions of tonnes each year and is mostly from land-based sources.

A 2006 United Nations Environment Programme estimate suggested every square kilometere of world's ocean has an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter floating on the surface. A walk on an ocean shoreline anywhere in the world will provide ample evidence of the scale of the problem - unless it was recently cleaned up.

The Ocean Conservancy, a U.S.-based NGO, has been leading beach and shoreline cleanups around the world for 25 years. Over that time, nearly nine million volunteers in 152 countries have cleaned up and catalogued 66 million kilogrammes of trash, according a new report released here in Honolulu.

The top three trash items collected by number of items found were cigarette butts, food packaging and bottle caps or lids. Plastic bags, bottles and straws or stirrers also made the top 10. "People don't realise that the cumulative impact of marine debris is a major issue for the oceans," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

UNEP and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are conference co-sponsors. (Full disclosure: UNEP provided travel funding for IPS to attend the conference). (END)