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

Filmed by Victoria Sloan Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

Jan Vozenilek captures the presence and vulnerability of the fledgling birds of Midway in this next installment of his Brushstrokes vignettes.

Filmed and edited 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

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

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.)

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.

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.

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.”