Tag: Midway Island

Can you stomach it? They could … and couldn’t.

Midway Island, Oct 2009, Chris Jordan

Courtesy of the camera and work of Chris Jordan, decaying Albatross chicks are sending a message from the Pacific gyre about the plastic footprint that humanity is leaving across the planet.  Chris’ introduction to this searing set of photos:

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.

For more, see Midway Journey

Plastic People, Oh Baby, You’re Such A Drag

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Photobucket

The Midway Islands

Recently, I wrote about Si’an Kaan in Mexico and the utter disgrace that its beaches were full of plastic.  Today, it’s the Midway Islands and a BBC story that plastic in these islands in the very middle of the Pacific Ocean is killing birds.  That’s right.  In the middle of nowhere, plastic is killing the birds.  And turtles.  And fish.  Plastic is everywhere.  It’s destroying wildlife.  It’s destroying the planet.

Join me in the ocean.