Brace yourself for this short video of the horrifying contents of the stomach of a dead baby albatross on Midway Atoll.
The island will soon be covered with tens of thousands of carcasses like this, as the plastic-filled birds die from starvation, dehydration, and choking.
Video by: Jan Vozenilek
Music by: Christen Lien
Seabird photography calls for telephoto lenses, camouflage clothing, and stealth movements, right?
Well, not on Midway Atoll. On their second day on the island, Chris Jordan, Jan Vozenilek and the rest of the Midway Journey team are adopted as brothers and sisters by the charismatic albatrosses of Midway. These magnificent creatures inhabit the vast and solitary expanses of the North Pacific. A world of broad horizons, trade winds, passing storm clouds, and hundreds of shades of blue. A space of primeval purity that has changed little for millions of years.
Unchallenged by predators, these masters of the skies are intrigued by the proximity of unfamiliar two-legged creatures. Thus, the examiners become the examined, and the photographers have their lenses scrutinized and pecked by birds so fearless, and open to the possibilities, that instantly awaken the child inside of us.
Video by: Jan Vozenilek
Music by: Christen Lien
Written by: Manuel Maqueda
Dear Friends and Followers of Midway Journey,
Thank you for your patience as we have taken a few days to find our bearings and connect to the Internet. We are astonished and delighted to find ourselves back here again on remote Midway Atoll. The tiny island is now covered with several hundred thousand fledgling albatrosses inhabiting the paths, walkways, roads, meadows, and even the runway.
It’s hard to describe the complex mixture of feelings that arise in the presence of this incredible abundance of wildlife, especially as we are keenly aware of the devastating effects of the plastic that fills the stomachs of a huge percentage of these young birds. One purpose of this leg of our journey is to witness their annual die-off, which will result in thousands of plastic-filled carcasses covering the ground as we saw when we visited here last September.
We’ve already begun to acquaint ourselves with the new stories that this chapter of our journey holds, and we look forward to sharing them with you over the next couple of weeks. Thank you for joining us in this process.
With warm regards from Midway Atoll,
Chris, Victoria, Jan & Joe
Video by: Jan Vozenilek Vimeo.com/JanVozenilek
Music by: Christen Lien itsnotaviolin.com
See the area where this video was filmed on BlooSee’s satellite imagery.
Dear friends and followers of Midway Journey,
As my team and I prepare to travel back to Midway Atoll, I cannot help but note the macabre juxtaposition of the environmental disaster that is happening in the Pacific Ocean, with the one that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico. The two phenomena are oddly parallel, involving (among other grotesque features) the deaths of untold numbers of sea birds, caused by millions of tons of our petroleum products that have poured into the ocean via our collective negligence. And in each case the birds can be viewed as messengers, serving as one small warning signal of a much larger calamity, with global consequences, in which our individual consumer lifestyles are unavoidably complicit.
My friend the artist Richard Lang says the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but indifference. For me this means that to live ethical lives, we are called to turn toward the staggering enormity of human-caused catastrophes like the Pacific Garbage Patch and the Gulf Oil Disaster, opening our hearts to their horrors, and taking the risk that we might be overwhelmed by the potent feelings this process brings up in us. I can see no other acceptable approach, yet I fear that by dwelling on the awfulness of these tragedies—and the smorgasbord of others we survey in the news every day—we may lose our already tenuous connection with life’s beauty, mystery, humor, and joy. I want to learn to stand in the paradox of these conflicting realities, turning more fully toward each of them despite the anxiety involved, as they generate their respective teachings about what it means to live as an engaged citizen in our times.
These are some thoughts and intentions I carry in mind, as we journey back to Midway to document another chapter in the richly metaphoric intersection of the mythic albatross and the ten million tons of plastic pollution that swirl in the remote waters of the North Pacific. I invite you to follow our expedition as we blog from the island on midwayjourney.com, and as we release our photographs, writings, and the documentary film that will follow.
Happy July to all, with warm regards from Seattle,
~cj
A walk on the shores of the remote and wild Canadian island of Cortes illustrates that plastic is polluting even the most remote and beautiful corners of our planet.
Midway Journey members Chris Jordan, Manuel Maqueda, Jan Vozenilek and Bill Weaver reunited in May 2010 to attend the Media that Matters conference in Hollyhock, Cortes Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Music by Christen Lien
Video by Jan Vozenilek
In the Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who was cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.
A beach cleanup on Midway Atoll made us feel just like Sisyphus.
There are millions of tons of plastics present in our oceans, and these are constantly fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces which are scattered throughout the water column and present, in different densities, throughout all the worlds oceans.
Contrary to what many people believe, there are no visible islands of trash anywhere –even if some areas, the gyres, accumulate higher densities of plastic pollution. In actuality, what is happening is much more complex and scary: our oceans are becoming a planetary soup laced with plastic.
To make thing worse, these tiny pieces of plastic are extremely powerful chemical accumulators for organic persistent pollutants present in ambient sea water such as DDE‘s and PCB‘s. The whole food chain, invertebrates, fish, sea turtles… are eating plastic and /or other animals who have plastic in them. This means that we are. Like the albatrosses on Midway, we carry the garbage patch inside of us.
Cleaning up this mess is not feasible, technically or economically. Even if all the boats in the world were put to the task somehow, the cleanup would not only remove the plastics but also the plankton, which is the base of the food chain, and is responsible for capturing half of the CO2 of our atmosphere and generating half of the oxygen we need to breathe.
But even if this problem was solved too somehow, the amount of plastic that we could capture, at an immense cost, would be a drop in the bucket as compared to the amount that flows into the ocean every day.
No matter how hard we push, in terms of technology or money, the boulder will be rolling back down the hill, throughout eternity, unless we stop putting more plastics into our environment.
The good news is that we can do this. We can do this now. We need to start a social movement that spreads virally and creates a critical mass of concerned citizens who pledge to move away from our disposable habits, and who raise their voice to reject and reverse a throwaway culture that might be profitable, but whose consequences are intolerable.
Video by Jan Vozenilek
Written and narrated by: Manuel Maqueda
Music by Christen Lien www.itsnotaviolin.com
Click here to see a satellite image of the exact location of this video (click on ‘view map’ and zoom all the way in.)
Chris Jordan has just released on YouTube a 6’30″ video slide show of some of his Midway photographs with the music of Christen Lien.
An HD version can be viewed here.
Images and video: Chris Jordan. Music: Christen Lien
The original quicktime file (103 MB) can be downloaded fron this link.
Chris has released and posted on his website a selection of his photographs under the title “Message from the Gyre”.
In Chris’ words:
These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.
More details on Chris’ photography ethic can be found here.
The full selection of photographs released to date can be viewed here.
In the midst of the tragedy of plastic pollution on Midway, Jan Vozenilek’s camera tuns, for an instant, to the triumph of life over decay.
During our journey, Jan would occasionally steal away from the group, and wander alone in the island with his camera. The rest of us would wonder where he was, and what kind of footage he would be capturing.
The scenes on Brushstrokes 2 speak of moments of intimacy, where the cinematographer is alone in the field, tuning into the pulse of the land, and letting its natural beauty tell an ancient story of survival and renewal.
In this short video lies a reverence for nature so profound, that our eye has to concentrate on the small details, and peek shyly through blades of grass, lest the direct contemplation of the greatness of it all be overwhelming. As we watch, we feel the emergence of that peculiar sense wonder that is often thought to belong only to childhood. A sense of awe and discovery that we are taught to suppress and forget as we grow up.
As time slows down, and the rays of golden light fall gently on the tortured landscape of Midway, subtle brushstrokes of natural beauty are painted over a canvas too many times torn and blotted by the blindness of man.
Video by Jan Vozenilek. Music by Vanessa LeBourdais.
Scientists say that plastic now outweighs plankton 6 to 1 in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The lagoon of Midway Atoll is the perfect laboratory to witness all sizes of plastic slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. A variety of plastic washes up on the beaches daily, but not before some local fish make a meal of it.
Video by: Jan Vozenilek. Voiceover: Victoria Sloan Jordan.
Music by Christen Lien
