Video by Jan Vozenilek
Written by Victoria Sloan Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

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.

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

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.)

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.

Video by: Jan Vozenilek.  Voiceover: Victoria Sloan Jordan.

Music by Christen Lien

Matt Brown, Manager of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, took us on a tour of Eastern Island as he and two volunteers inspected three fresh water ponds occupied by extremely rare and endangered Laysan Ducks.  Eastern Island is entirely crisscrossed by abandoned runways dating back to World War II, today almost unrecognizable under a layer of vegetation that grows through cracks in the pavement.  While nature slowly triumphs over dilapidated asphalt, iron and cement, Eastern Island has not escaped the onslaught of plastic pollution, which is present everywhere.

Video by Bill Weaver. Cinematography by Jan Vozenilek. Voiceover by Chris Jordan. Interviewee: Matt Brown. Music by Vanessa LeBourdais.

Video by Bill Weaver, voice over by Chris Jordan. Music by Christen Lien.

I’m confused by the abundant life and abundant plastic pollution here.  It’s easy to slip into a fantasy that a sort of balance has been achieved on Midway Atoll.  Birds nesting amidst plastic cigarette lighters, bottle caps, toys, umpteen bits and pieces of plastic; turtles pulling up on the beach to rest among plastic buoys and ghost nets and fuel containers; seals frolicking under the pier with discarded shampoo bottles – all of it getting along, or so it seems from a cartoon view.  But then you begin to encounter the decaying bodies of albatross, almost all of them containing some amount of plastic, and some completely choked with it that there’s no mystery how this bird died.

How can I possibly continue to contribute to the stream of plastic into our waterways and oceans after seeing the albatross stuffed with plastic?   Matches, people.  Glass, metal.  Re-use!  Forget recycling, it’s not happening, and when it’s plastic it’s called down-cycling, anyway.  What happens when we are up to our eyeballs in fleece and carpet and plastic decking?

I will go home a changed person after this trip.  I’ve been an uber-recycler for most of my adult life.  But now I can see that recycling is not the answer.  We just need to stop making so much plastic.  From here forward, my own consumption of it, especially disposables, will be under a high-power microscope.  I’ll be considering every way in which I use plastic in my life, examining my wasteful habits more deeply, and asking myself what’s really important – a quick, disposable convenience or something with enduring value?  It’s a good lesson for me on how to use stuff, and also how to enrich my life.

Consider joining the discussion about plastics on our Facebook group by clicking on the Discussion tab.

~Victoria Sloan Jordan

So much plastic, and in such bizarre combinations of objects and colors, that we recently posted a video in which Chris explains his photography ethic: no plastic is added to any photo, and the plastic is never rearranged.

It will be more than a month before Chris’ photos are processed and released. This morning Chris decided to offer a glimpse of what these carcasses look like.

I thought I’d check in at the halfway point of our trip. First of all, greetings! I wish I could snap my fingers and you would all appear here with us.

In terms of my photographic work so far, my primary feeling is one of anxious urgency. What I am seeing through my viewfinder is amazing—everything I had hoped for, and much more. The albatross carcasses are astonishingly beautiful and visually complex, each one offering a slightly different view into the intricate architecture of these magnificent creatures. The pieces of plastic in their body cavities—cigarette lighters, bottle caps, pens, toothbrushes, and lots of other brightly colored plastic chunks, juxtapose like colors in a painting against the rich palettes of neutral tones in the birds’ decaying feathers and bones. Aesthetically, I hope that the images I am capturing will carry the same kind of uncomfortable desolate beauty that my other work has explored.

The part that makes me anxious is that I have no idea what is actually being recorded on my memory cards. I feel clumsy working with my new digital camera system. My hands lack fluency with the knobs and buttons; the menus don’t come naturally to my thought process; and I don’t know if I am getting the fine focus and the exposures correct. What I do know is that this equipment will produce outrageously high quality images if I get the settings right. Fingers crossed!

A couple of days ago I discovered a huge pile of several thousand albatross carcasses sequestered in a remote meadow. We figured they must be all the birds that had died around the living quarters, moved to a place where they can decompose naturally, away from the island village. The pile is a couple of feet deep and about twenty feet square, with thousands upon thousands of wings, skulls, rib cages, feathers, and bones, all mixed and permeated with a shocking amount of plastic junk.

It is a horrific and moving sight, evocative of images of mass graves from wars, more visually intense than anything I had expected to find here. I devoted a whole day to photographing the pile, and plan to return several times more. In terms of experiencing the depth of the tragedy we came here to witness, this is the heart of darkness of our journey. I feel overwhelmed and numbed by it, and I also sense that if there is any kind of breakthrough in our process to be attained on this trip, this pile represents the portal through which we must pass.

This Monday, September 21st, marks the autumnal equinox, a middle place in our yearly circuit around the sun, halfway between the days of longest darkness and longest light. On that day, at noon Midway time (four hours earlier than Pacific time), our team will return to the pile. Our shared intention is to connect as deeply as we can with the profound story that these birds have to tell. Please remember us on that day, and hold our process in your thoughts, as we will hold you in ours.

~cj

As soon as we landed on the island, we all agreed to adhere to a strict work ethic that is summarized in these three rules:

• No plastic added.  We never add any additional plastic to any images or compositions. What you’ll see it what was there.
• No rearranging. The plastic contents of the rib cages are not rearranged in any way.
• OK to remove. We allow ourselves to occasionally remove from the frame a few objects that might obstruct the view, such as twigs, feathers, grass leaves, or pieces of plastic from the top layer.

Chris Jordan explains these rules in more detail in the following video.

-Bill Weaver

Voiceover by Chris Jordan

But amidst all this beautiful Midway magic, Manuel and Chris find that a closer look easily reveals one of the planets biggest hidden threats.

-Jan Vozenilek.

(Video narrated by Manuel Maqueda)

Español: La isla de Midway está rodeada por un impresionante arrecife de coral.  En su costa septentrional, las aguas añiles besan un kilómetro de arenas blancas.

Pero en medio de esta mágica belleza, Manuel y Chris se dan cuenta que una mirada más detallada revela una de las mayores amenazas del planeta.

Vídeo de Jan Vozenilek

Transcripción en español de la narración de Manuel Maqueda

“Hoy hemos llegado a a Midway, y lo primero que hemos hecho tras recibir nuestra charla de orientación ha sido ir a la playa. Al llegar, nos hemos quedado sobrecogidos al contemplar la belleza del lugar y los colores increíbles…. Si embargo, se nos vino el alma a los pies al comprobar que la línea que deja marea alta estaba enteramente cubierta de plástico.  Este trozo de botella ha sido mordisqueado por los peces, está lleno de dentelladas.  Los peces están comiendo plástico, y si ellos los comen, también nosotros.  Y no sólo hay objetos grandes, tambien trocitos diminutos de plástico por todas partes. Si se presta atención, uno se da cuenta que, mezclados con la arena, hay trocitos de plástico por todas partes.  Es increíble pensar que esto ocurre con cada una de las mareas que llegan a esta playa.  Un síntoma del enorme problema que tenemos con el plástico en nuestros mares.

He visto muestras de plástico de la Gran Mancha de Basura del Pacífico y llevo tiempo hablando de este problema y concienciando a la gente, pero al estar aquí, en un lugar tan remoto y tan bello y darme cuenta de lo terrible de la situación…, no ya saberlo, sino verlo con mis propios ojos…. es descorazonador.   Pero me alegro de estar aquí, porque venimos para hacer algo al respecto.”