Young albatrosses making their first foray out to sea can become waterlogged and exhausted, drifting back to the beach to rest and dry out. This disturbing video shows the plight of those unlucky enough to become trapped by the high metal retaining walls in Midway’s harbor. The doomed birds drown in an entanglement of dead [...]
Chris Jordan peels back the ribcage of a decaying albatross chick to reveal yet another belly-cargo of plastic. The ever present bottle cap is joined by a ballpoint pen cap, fishing float, and other assorted plastic junk from the human world that albatrosses forage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, mistaking it for food. Video [...]
Stomach contents of another dead baby albatross are revealed as Chris Jordan cuts the bird open with scissors from a dissection kit provided by US Fish and Wildlife Service. Filmed by Victoria Sloan Jordan Music by Christen Lien
Young Laysan Albatrosses look wizened and world-weary in their grizzled down, but they have only just begun to test their wings on the wind and water, and the success of their journey remains uncertain. Jan Vozenilek captures the presence and vulnerability of the fledgling birds of Midway in this next installment of his Brushstrokes vignettes. [...]
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
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
