We will be doing a LIVE broadcast from Midway Island during our visit. Please stay tuned for the exact date and time.

Dear Friends,

Here we go again, schlepping a small mountain of photo/video/sound recording gear back out to remote postage-stamp-sized Midway Island that has captured our hearts and imaginations in its powerful vortex. This time, if all goes well, we will witness and film a beautiful sight: the hatching of 300,000 baby albatrosses from their eggs. The adult albatrosses lay their eggs right on the ground, and as you know, they have no fear of humans, so we will be able to watch the little silver fluff balls emerging from their eggs from super close up. We are decked out with high-resolution camera and film gear with close-focus lenses, and lots of umbrellas and warm clothes, as the weather on Midway this time of year is stormy, wet, and cold.

Funding-wise, for this leg of the journey we are grateful to Koerner Camera in Seattle, the Compton Family Foundation in California, the Pax Natura Foundation in Salt Lake City and Aqua Hotels in Honolulu.  And as always, big love for the fab peeps at the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the island, all of whom have gone far above and beyond with their kind support of our vision.

Our A-team this trip includes Midway veterans Jan Vozenilek (Director of Photography for the film), Joe Schweers (Lead Camera and wildlife cinematography specialist), Jim Hurst (sound engineer, jib-arm expert, camera tech, and MacGyver-of-all-trades), Victoria Jordan (team poet, line producer, and my indispensable companion and soul mate).

We’ll be on the island Feb 2-16, and we plan on making lots of short behind-the-scenes videos to share with you during this trip, so stay tuned. Wish us luck, and looking forward to checking in from Midway!

~CJ

We will be returning to Midway again in February 2012 to film and witness hundreds of thousands of albatross babies hatching from their eggs, which our friends on the island say is one of the most beautiful sights on planet Earth. Our film is progressing well, with several exciting announcements coming soon. Stay tuned! ~Chris Jordan

Courtship Medley à la Albatross

It begins with a prance dance,
a tiptoe head-bob waddle
and a wing fluff.  Then, fake a preen,
shake out a sideways
head-breaking shriek,
a chair-leg-floor-scrape scream,
and sidle into a crooked raga
with fast and furious tabla drums,
and applause, applause, wait –

it’s a drill-hammer fixing
a squeaky door behind the beak,
a flanking feather-grab tease
to a show of chocolate origami wings,
quick switcheroo to a bass kazoo,
throw the head up high, trumpet
to blow the clouds from the sky,
it’s a match, it’s a mate, a pact
to hatch an egg, raise a chick,

then bid adieu until next season,
dancing days forever over
in favor of a lifelong bond.

~Victoria Sloan Jordan

 

photo: kris krug

This is a moment in time, a chance to witness and understand our role in an astonishing environmental tragedy. This is a place that provides context. Here, reflected in the beauty of the Albatross, is an unfolding horror. Yet it is a horror in which we see our own lives, a snapshot of our impact on the planet that challenges us to consider how to move forward.

Join us, on a breathtaking and emotional journey, into the heart of the Pacific, and into the heart of ourselves.

Production of the feature film “MIDWAY” continues through 2012.

Cinematography by Jan Vozenilek and Joe Schweers

Click here to view the trailer in HD
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GudEuDTrSLU&hd=1

Filmed and edited by Joe Schweers
Narrated by Chris Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

Filmed and edited by Jan Vozenilek

Music by Christen Lien

Filmed and edited by Jan Vozenilek
Narrated by Chris Jordan
Written by Victoria Sloan Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

Exact Location on BlooSee

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

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

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

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

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