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The Earth seen from the Moon - Maarten Vanden Eynde

Wend magazine Editor-in-Chief and Surfrider Foundation Ambassador Stiv Wilson is on a sailboat with Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation on an environmental research mission to explore plastic in the Sargasso Sea.

Here is his latest update, sent to Wend HQ via satellite:

Enroute to the Epicenter

29° 58.49 North

58°  02.39 West

Apologies for sending these a bit late.

After a few brief but busy days in Bermuda, the crew of the Sea Dragon is again underway.  We are heading Southeast from Bermuda, bearing towards a waypoint where we believe the greatest amount of plastic density will be. But before I get into detail of the leg of this journey, I’d like to personally thank a few Bermudians for their warmth and generous support of the 5 Gyres project.

Our budget is tight so naturally one of our most intimate concerns has been our ability to provision well for this leg of the journey. Bermuda is crazy expensive, but thanks to the diligence of one our crew members, Leslie Moyer (who has been blogging about the trip), we were able to secure a sponsor for provisions.  Thanks to Mr. Jim Butterfield, a local Bermudian businessman who happens to be in the grocery store game, Sea Dragon has never been so stocked.

On this leg, we’ve lost a couple crew members but gained some new ones. Joining us is a marine biologist from Giahanna named Elton, who is measuring CO2 density in the water as we progress.  The goal is to get a transect of data that will illuminate the issue of ocean acidification. We have also been joined by Maarten, Marjolijn and Lam, all artists from Belgium and the Netherlands.

Maarten is a sculptor, working in mixed media and found objects around a central science of his own invention called Genetology (genetology.net and check links to other sources), that presupposes an apocalypse that shatters human historical context and imagines an archaeology like discipline in the future but of present time.  Essentially, his concept is that history is always subject to relative interpretation and thus even fact, as we understand it, evolves, and thus the conception of the ‘now reality we experience’ will be different than our future perception of reality.  Mostly, his work has been in organic mediums and found debris but after coming across the work of Charles Moore (Algalita Founder) in the North Pacific, Maarten was inspired to collect plastic debris from all over the planet, manipulate it, and build a reef like installation that re-imagines plastic debris as an organic building block, like coral.  Each time the work is shown, it has grown, and the next showing of it is at The Amsterdam Art Fair in May of 2010.  By then, it will have grown to four-by-five meters.  The work in progress is supported by Fonds BKVB.

Big thanks to Aquapac, Keen, Patagonia, Blue Turtle, EcoUsable, The Surfrider Foundation, Ron and Portia at Pangaea Explorations (owners of the Sea Dragon and directors of the Pan Explore Project) and the VERY AWESOME FOLKS at Clifbar who sent us a 35-pound care package of pure energy to Bermuda.

Wend magazine Editor-in-Chief and Surfrider Foundation Ambassador Stiv Wilson is on a sailboat with Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation on an environmental research mission to explore plastic in the Sargasso Sea.

Here is his latest update, sent to Wend HQ via satellite:

Discovery: The Atlantic Garbage Patch

25 33 18 North

62 26 47 West

After a temporary break in the weather and a fairly brutal night, the crew was up and in science mode again.  Just around 11 am, the sun broke and Marcus and Anna spotted what’s called a wind row or flotsam line.  The sea was fairly calm, and we followed the row.

Flotsam lines like this form on the boundary of the Gulf Stream and the stuff contained in them are either recycled through the gyre or pushed to shore—  they don’t remain in the gulf stream.  After several days of low yield sampling, more than 500 miles outside of Bermuda, we stumbled upon what we’re now calling the Atlantic garbage patch. 

For over an hour, we followed the line, scooping up debris every few seconds.  One rubber boot, 15 plastic bottle caps, random shards of plastic, a shotgun shell, clothes hangers, plastic bags—plastic, plastic, plastic.  Though we’re still not in the epicenter of  what comprises the Atlantic gyre,  we’re beginning to see an increase in debris. Anna and Marcus fear the density of the plastic will increase as we approach Bermuda.

Part of the ocean that comprises the Atlantic Gyre is the Sargasso Sea, so named for Sargassum, a green, free-floating plant that’s abundant here.  Big Sargassum patches are typically good indicators for the presence of marine debris.  Sure enough, they were full of the stuff.  What’s even more disturbing is the amount of debris that can’t be seen. Until happening upon the garbage patch, we hadn’t actually been trawling with the Manta trawler, the device that filters the sea water for micro pieces of plastic fragments.

If you’re following my updates, then I’m sure you’ve already heard me say this—  but to be this far out into the wilderness,  far, far away from any landmass and find that our ocean is ubiquitously filled with this stuff continues to challenge my abilities of comprehension.  The brute facticity of what we’re witnessing first hand is inescapable–  humans are breaking the ocean.

Once again, science will have to wait for calmer weather.  We’re full sail on a close reach with a double reefed mainsail and staysail (sails with decreased surface area for harsher conditions) averaging about 9-10 knots to the NE.  We’re trying to make up some ground and make Bermuda by the 17^th or 18^th.  The Sea Dragon can knock off about 200 miles a day easily if we have the right wind, but when the MantaTrawl is deployed to collect our plastic samples, we can’t go over 2.5 knots or the samples we’ll be compromised.  But, as I said in an earlier post, the North Atlantic is a far different beast than the North Pacific, and weather is a constant issue, so we talk advantage of the breaks in weather to conduct science.  Right now, we’re tracking a big low pressure system set to hammer the Bermuda and we’re hoping to stay ahead of it and make landfall safely.  If we can’t get there in time to beat the storm, we’ll have to stay offshore until it passes.

Thanks to Surfrider and Aquapac for getting me out here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Editor’s note: We received the (above) video footage four days after the original post went online. We have updated it to include the footage.

Wend magazine Editor-in-Chief and Surfrider Foundation Ambassador Stiv Wilson is on a sailboat with Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation on an environmental research mission to explore plastic in the Sargasso Sea.

Here is his latest update, sent to Wend HQ via satellite:

A few days ago, the ocean was quiet, and the sails were at full luff.  I convinced our skipper to allow us to take a swim off the side of the Sea Dragon.  He capitulated after some prodding and even joined us after a while.  Nothing like a swan dive off the bowsprit (front of ship) into 6,000 feet of  the most electric blue water I’ve ever seen.  The swim was good for the crew’s morale as one thing that confounds the body at sea is the utter lack of exercise one can get.  At every move through the cabin one attempts to stretch out a muscle, or the neck, or the back, but it’s quite difficult in a constantly heaving ship to feel whole.  Luckily however, this ship is long enough for me to stand when below.  I can’t express how much of a luxury this has been compared to other vessels I’ve been on.

Watches:

We’re a crew of nine but only six of us do formal watches. The skipper is always on duty, and Anna and Marcus create their schedule around research.  We’re divided into two teams. My team includes myself, Lesley and Stephen.  Lesley is a Bay area activist with a bright and shiny wit, and is wise about anything having to do with human relationships and moods.  She’s been a joy.  Stephen is the ship’s intern, just 19, who decided to skip a year between high school and college to sail around the world.  He’s become like a little brother and reminds me of myself at that age.  He’s a bonafide romantic and idealist, and far more mature than any kid of his age that I’ve met in a  very long time.

Our watches alternate 4 hours on, 4 hours off, then 6 hours on, 6 hours off.   We pass the time well, and it’s truly amazing how fast you can get into another’s inner workings when there is simply nothing else to do.  I will remain good friends with Lesley and Stephen after this trip and I look forward to joining them on the second leg from Bermuda to The Azores.   Thus far, our favorite games to pass the time are:  shag, marry, kill–where you name three celebrities and you have to choose which you’d…well, you get the idea–and talking about what our post apocalyptic vehicles of choice would consist of, and also, what our last meals would be.

Okay, that’s all that’s live from the Bermuda Triangle for now.  Over and out.

Wend magazine Editor-in-Chief and Surfrider Foundation Ambassador Stiv Wilson is on a sailboat with Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation on an environmental research mission to explore plastic in the Sargasso Sea.

Here is his latest update, sent to Wend HQ via satellite:

HEAVY

23 55 09 N

62 53 04 W

It’s Tuesday 13:38 GMT, and the sea has gone rough.  We’ve encountered a fairly significant series of low pressure systems that is making the science work impossible.  Typically, from our position, the dominant wind comes from the West, so as we try to gain latitude northward towards Bermuda, being perpindincular to the wind makes for easy ground making.  But this system is a bit unusual and we’re taking our weather straight on the nose, from the North which makes gaining ground northward extremely difficult.

It’s our fifth day at sea and we’re 515 nautical miles south/southwest of Bermuda. Our current goal is just SE of there to a waypoint where we expect to find one of the densest marine debris zones in the Atlantic.  But the current state of the sea makes getting there tough business.  I’d estimate our seas at about 12-20 feet, and quite jumbled which makes getting about deck and the cabin difficult.

Currently, we’ve experienced sustained winds of 23 knots for over 24 hours now, with gusts up to 30+ and our on our watch we’re taking pretty heavy, bone-chilling spray.  Yesterday morning we were in calmish seas, 85 degrees and sunny. Now it’s full foul weather gear and chilled bodies on deck.

When tussling about like this, even the most stalwart salts are prone to extreme seasickness.  Already, seasickness has claimed most of the crew save for the Captain, the first mate and myself (I am blessed to be entirely unaffected by seasickness).  I can’t imagine the pain my fellow crew is suffering, but I can witness it in their faces as they attempt to carry on, one breath away from vomiting at any moment.  Seasickness is not only difficult to deal with, it’s extremely enervating and several of the crew have been relegated to their bunks by no choice of their own.  Being a soul unaffected, I attempt help pick up any slack.  I maintain good spirits as doing anything else is of real detriment to the crew.   I help the captain and mate with the running of the ship as best as I can and I’m taking artful care with the preparation of our meals as good food at sea raises spirits like nothing else.  Anna is quite gifted in the offshore culinary arts as well.

I’m feeling a bit sad for Anna and Marcus, as we’ve only managed to collect 7 gyre samples of the about the 25 that we hope to get on this leg of the voyage.  But the sea state makes trawling for plastic dangerous and impractical. They knew from the outset that documenting plastic pollution in the Atlantic would be much more challenging because unlike the Pacific Gyre,  the Atlantic doesn’t have that constant high pressure system that becalms the sea and makes research easy.  The only time that the high pressure would sit over our position is in May, but then you’re right on the cusp of hurricane season and thus, you’re essentially gambling on when the hurricane season will actually start and the risk then can be too great.  But if we can gain some latitude northwards we should have a couple days without strong weather where research will be more efficient.

Though sitting for five more days in inclement weather isn’t what anyone wants, everyone remains in good spirits.  But right now, here, in the Atlantic, taking two steps on deck is a challenge and being angry because of it is a useless emotion conjured by an egoist.  Though I can feel Anna and Marcus’s disappointment, there remains a very bright side (depending on your perspective- and ours is that a hypothesis of plastic concentrations in the Atlantic is confirmed) the first 7 samples have all shown strong evidence of plastic pollution.  This is absolutely astonishing to think about given our position and how far we are from any land mass.   To me, it’s fair to say that the shit is everywhere.  When looking at the samples, it might not appear like much, but remember, we’re taking only a 60-by-30 centimeter transect of the ocean’s entire surface volume.  You do the math.

This photo was sent via satellite, therefore the quality isn't the best

Positon:

21 28 74 North

63 35 21 West

The crew of the Sea Dragon are now on our third day of research, having left the USVI on the 9th.  We are trawling for marine debris every six or so hours, and the nets are deployed for 2 hours.  It is our goal to collect 25 samples on this leg and send them back to California for analysis.  So far we’ve managed to do four trawls, and each time there has been evidence of plastic debris and at least once, ingestion of plastic by a jellyfish.

Often, when people speak of the North Pacific Gyre, they’ll speak of a massive floating garbage dump.  This is an incorrect way to comprehend the problem.  What needs to be understood is the degree of scale that the ocean ellicits.  We are over 200 miles from the nearest landfall at this point, and trawling with a device with an opening of 60 centimeters wide and 30 high produces fragments and fragments of plastic, every –time.  I’m blown away by the volume of space that the ocean occupies;  yet everywhere, from the Pacific and now the Atlantic we find evidence of our own human stain in places never documented before.  Yes, the crap is here in the Atlantic too, that we can definitely now prove.

We talked as crew upon leaving the USVI, chatting about how any scientist wants to prove his or her hypothesis, but that it would have been far better to see us fail.  To see us find nothing.  Because that would mean that the horror that exists in the Northern Pacific is contained.  Well, we’ve just found out, in a first hand manner, that it’s no longer a concern to just one area of the world.

The crap is everywhere.

We can’t be under sail power when we trawl, as the boat speed is too great, so we’re resigned to cruising with the motor at about 1.5 knots during collection times. Last evening, my watch mates and I enjoyed the most beautiful sailing yet;  a reminder for me, personally why it’s of such importance to protect our oceans.  Our watch was from 14:00 to 20:00 hours, and Stephen Amato (the ship’s intern) and Leslie Moyer (A Bay area ocean activist) and I watched a waning moon rise into an incredible blanket of constellations: Orion, Cassiopia, Cepheus, Draco, The Seven Sisters, and more were spotted.  We had a few flying fish up on the deck, but otherwise, we had a quiet night of clipping along under full sail at about 8 knots.

It’s hard describe the feelings one has for his crewmates;  it’s like speedfriending.  There is such a surfeit of time at sea and you’ll find yourself knowing people at faster rates than you ever thought possible, you also find yourself less guarded, more generous, more empathetic, because if there is one thing that can’t happen under such tight quarters is conflict.  To let conflict emerge is a supreme detriment to the entire crew, and because of that, it’s quickly quashed any time it emerges.  On the flip side, in just three or four days, I’ve already found friends that will last a lifetime, as they share a passion for this issue, and a willingness to try to make a difference.  Special thanks to Aquapac and The Surfrider Foundation for helping me to make this voyage possible.

I apologize for the photo resolution.  Sending email via satellite is quite difficult.

This evening, the rest of our crew will arrive, and tomorrow we’ll go to sea for a short sail, in what’s called a shakedown run. Basically, it gives everyone the chance get their sea legs, understand how the vessel will work, and Dr. Eriksen will explain his methodology for collecting debris samples while we’re underway. For my portion of the journey, I’ll be with the team from USVI to Bermuda, sailing some 810 nautical miles. From the outset we’ll be trawling for debris, collecting samples that will later be analyzed in a lab back in California. As we approach Bermuda, we’ll be in a doldrum area (an area without much wind) where we’ll actually get in the water to document the density of debris in the accumulation zone of the Atlantic Gyre. Thanks to Surfrider, Aquapac, Looptworks, Keen, and Patagonia for making this trip possible.