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Sea Dragon in the Sargasso Sea

Tuesday, June 4th, 2013 by admin

Sea Dragon and the Pangaea crew have been having a wonderful time in Bermuda! They arrived in Hamilton after a 6-day transit from Key West on on May 18th. Since the arrival, Pangaea has joined forces with the Greenrock’s Bermuda Alliance for the Sargasso Sea project, or BASS. See the flyer here.

Together, we will head out on two Sargasso Sea expeditions, a 3-day and a 5-day exploration trip. The trips will be supported by two weeks of shore-based laboratory, public awareness, and education activities, concluding with a one-day “summit” to chart the path toward a Sargasso Sea conservation strategy.


Focusing on the Sargassum community, plankton, mid-water fauna including fishes and squids, and seabirds, scientific teams of 12 made up of Bermuda and visiting scientists, student interns, teachers, decision-makers, advocacy groups and film makers, will record, collect, photograph and preserve some of the most iconic Sargasso Sea biodiversity including their genomes.

Check it on YouTube (via the Royal Gazette): BASS and Sea Dragon in the Sargasso Sea

Catch up with us in Bermuda!

June 7th Public Summit at Bermuda College
9:30am – 12:30pm | Small Lecture Hall, Bermuda College
June 7th 5 Gyres at BAMZ
‘Meet and Greet’ Cocktail Reception | 7pm – 7:30pm | AZU Beastro, BAMZ
Public Lecture | 7:30pm | Education Auditorium, BAMZ
Email  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to reserve space. Tickets are FREE, but seating is limited.
June 8th World Oceans Day
FREE Open Day aboard Sea Dragon
10am – 4pm | Number 1 Dock, Hamilton

See what our partners at Algalita have to say about whats going on in the Gyres.

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Midway Atoll, Midnight Philosophy, and A Plastic Buffet For Albatrosses.

Monday, July 2nd, 2012 by alex

albi

We’re just west of Midway Atoll and we’ve found the sun, thankfully. Sea Dragon is dried out, but we’re under provisioned and almost entirely out of vegetables (even canned) and the watermaker is acting up (again) and so the crew isn’t allowed fresh water showers. We have 1500 liters of fresh water until Maui which is enough for hydration and dishwashing, but that’s it.  Not a big deal, but getting clean once every few days is something that keeps morale up for crew that’s
had a pretty hard passage.  Saltwater showers are what mariners have done forever and slowly but surely the crew is acquiescing to fact that a primitive brine bath is the only option for now.  But for all the challenges, and to be frank–the weather and mechanical issues have put people to brink at times, one is always reminded that we’re not on a cruise, and we’re sailing across the ocean in small boat. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

But the joys are myriad and poignant, too. Recently we’ve had some of the most stunningly starry nights of the trip peppered by a fast waxing moon that casts us all in soft silhouettes and drifting moon shadows. When the stars come out, night watch becomes a forum for waxing poetic and philosophical. Starry nights also make for easy steering of the ship. Pick a star and keep it between the mast and the shrouds, and you’ll steer course.  Meteor showers have become commonplace, expected. Paul and Dani are all a marvel at the night sky; The Northern Hemisphere constellations are new to them being from
Australia and Brasil.

To do nothing but drive a ship through a void and stare at the stars for hours on ends makes the mind go big; reach for the sublime.  It’s when the angst of life on land is resolved, the personal tragedies that color our lives are shared and empathized with, all of which creates for an alchemy of healing and transcendence.  To touch timelessness adrift at sea is to grasp quietly at infinity in the heavens above—and organically, without conjuring or initiation, strife resolves and we imbue ourselves in the beauty that reveals itself in these moments.

When you spend a month at sea with a group of people the first week is all about feeling each other out, looking for one’s place in the pecking order and what contributions one can make that are the most useful. But quickly, barriers are dropped, as are inhibitions; if you need to change your underwear, you just do it as discreetly as you can, but there isn’t much privacy and walking all the way to the head (toilet) in a pitching boat isn’t worth it. This sort of stripping down to one’s bare self makes the superficial dissolve, replaced by true humanness.  It’s beautiful and sets the stage for personal interactions that spring from innocence, trust and a faculty to being present to, indeed, a gift at the speed of life seen from a child’s eye.

We’ve become close as a crew.  We monitor the Korean’s epic sea-sickness and delight that he’s moving about and eating again.  We make sure everyone’s getting enough to eat, that mentally, we’re all keeping on.  And everyday we practice our individual arts that consider this marine eco disaster we travel through known as plastic pollution.

For my part, I’ve been chasing albatrosses with my camera. For days, being so close to Midway, we’re seeing the regal birds all around. I’m in awe; they soar effortlessly, barely flapping their wings. They approach, circle, fish, then alight in the water for a rest and we leave them bobbing in Sea Dragon’s wake. But then, and again, they return only to alight once more.  I’ve been photographing these birds which has proven difficult. Shooting a moving object from a pitching object at distance with a 200 mil lens is not easy. But I’ve managed to get a few shots that catch these marvelous creatures
soaring and wandering the big blue.  It’s this beauty, like that which I’ve described before that makes us care for this ocean and makes this voyage, ‘life changing.’

When we pull up the trawl it’s like daggers—what remains from seining a just a sliver of the ocean is what kills albatross on Midway, what creates the subject for Chris Jordan’s seminal work.  But because there is beauty and camaraderie, care and common purpose, we’re ship of souls working to reverse this tragic new order, because we see everyday with delight and respect, what the ocean world should look like.

samplemidway
The wind is on the nose of Sea Dragon making for difficult headway eastward—bad wind directions gnaw on the nerves of our captains.  All of us are looking for land where loved ones and arugula salads wait for us.  But as we bash our way forward, I can’t help but draw a metaphor: sailing against the wind is like fighting against the tide of indifference that makes for an ocean full of plastic. Yet like you, we keep moving forward.

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Ghost Ship: A Lost Skiff Off 1500 miles off The Coast Of Japan

Monday, June 25th, 2012 by alex

Position:

29°11.9 North
170°35.2 East

boattsunami

“It’s a whale” yells Tracey from above deck.  I’m eating humus below
in the salon with Dani, after forgoing Kelvin’s lunch of fried Kim Chi
with rice and seaweed.  Wildlife sightings are like breaking news
aboard Sea Dragon, sometimes the only demarcation from one day to the
next. Dani and I both grabbed our cameras and went on deck. Tracey was
peering far off in the distance, tracking some object with binoculars.
The day before we had had a Sperm Whale breach within a 100 meters of
the ship to the bow and we hoped our luck would give us something
similar.  But there was no breaching and no blowhole spouting from the
object in the distance. “Is its fin just sticking out of the water?
What is that? It’s white…is it a white whale?” says someone on deck. I
move to the bowsprit, start snapping photos. There is no color in this
day—a gray sky meets a gray ocean at the horizon, it’s as if we’re
traveling through a monotone void.

As we come up onto the object, we realize it’s not a whale. “It’s a
boat!” I yell. Indeed it is–the front third of a small skiff, bobbing
vertically, bow out of the water. The action is so gentle—the sea
state is calm and the wind nearly nothing.  On either side of her are
Japanese characters, and it becomes instantly clear what we’ve found.

Here ,1500 miles east of Japan, we’ve found a boat presumably ripped
from its mooring when the wave hit. Everyday now, we’re spotting
something—a spare tire from a light truck, a piece of traditional
Japanese flooring, and several other objects that may or may not be
from the tsunami.  But this is the biggest find so far. The dimensions
of the ship however are not large—my guess is that it was about 16
feet when intact, and it looks like a Japanese version of the common
Central American runabout fishing boat: the Panga.

We dive on her to survey what we can’t see beneath. In the water,
there is little growth on the boat—just a few barnacles, maybe five or
so. Tucked in the inside are probably 50 or 60 fish; Triggers, Rainbow
Runners and some species that look clearly out of place—tropical coral
dwelling fish.  As we approach they scatter, then return. What’s now a
wreck of a boat has become a floating reef system for this crowd. The
back 2/3rds of the skiff are gone,the edges are jagged which denotes
some past violent action tearing the boat apart. “I wonder if the rest
of this boat is sunk, with an engine still attached,” says Marcus. We
go on to think about how many objects are anchored by some heavy
thing, that when rotted, will bob to the surface.

A small frayed line remains from a wooden beam in the front of the
boat which was presumably a painter line that had been tornfrom it’s
mooring when the wall of water engulfed her. As we survey, it’s like a
game of forensics.  But first, there is feeling of gravity as Marcus
and I look at each other—this was some fisherman’s boat, a vessel that
was taken to sea by some man or woman, used as a runabout and here
now, lost, derelict, the feeling in the water is eerie, haunting. What
brings solace is that the mooring line clearly looks ripped, which
makes us deduce that most likely this boat was tied to a dock at the
time of the wave; most likely no life was lost on her when the tsunami
struck—at least that’s our hope. It’s a loss for sure, but not of the
kind that can’t be replaced.

As Marcus and I tread water and our perspective becomes even more
diminutive, as we look at Sea Dragon about a quarter kilometer away.
We consider the depths below us, some 5,000 meters and the distance to
land. Nothing makes one more aware of his powerlessness like swimming
in the middle of the ocean, unattached from our home and lifeline; our
ship.  That sense of smallness felt, which is a continuing meme that
affects my thought process at sea makes me wonder what we’re missing
as we sail through the night—yes, what object and what story from this
tragedy passes by us, silently, unobserved and forgotten? And indeed,
what piece of flotsam is just past our vantage as we watch the horizon
from starboard and port?

We understand so little about this ocean, even with all our human
ingenuity.  A few days ago a boat washed up on the shore of my home
state, Oregon, 2,500 nautical miles from where I’m now.  Why does one
boat go so far? And why does one hardly drift? Well, that’s the hidden
industry of the mighty ocean, a secret not for me to know.

Now, after some considerable effort, the remains of the skiff reside
on the bow of Sea Dragon as we sail east.  We hope that her name
depicted in these pictures, will get to its owner, and we hope that
when we hear from them that we hear they are safe, dry and alive.  Our
hearts are always with you on this voyage Japan.

marcus boat.

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Trawling for pseudo-fish eggs

Monday, June 25th, 2012 by alex

IMG_3242

When Macro becomes micro the impact of plastic pollution shifts from being an eyesore for humans to an intestinal sore for fish.  The greatest migration on the planet is not the seasonal movements of wildebeest across Africa or Canada geese over North America, but the nightly mad rush of millions of tons of zooplankton, fish and larger predators to the surface to feed on the buffet of phytoplankton growing in the sun all day.  Of course only zooplankton eat phytoplankton, but the rest of the food chain follows.

Myctophid fish, in the picture here, are deep sea fish with glowing spots on their bellies, large wide eyes, and an appetite to match.  They scavenge the sea surface for zooplankton.  In 2009 Algalita collected 671 fish, of which 35% has plastic in their guts.  SCRIPPS did the same study in 2009 and discovered 9% ingested plastic.

We’re finding a few fish in our trawls, but today we also found fish eggs, a plastic bullet, microplastic fragments, and a nurdle.  Can the fish tell the difference?  What’s evident here is that the plastic you can’t see is equally, if not more problematic than the plastic you can see.  Though you can barely see it on the sea surface, the fish can, and go after it, consuming and retaining it in their gut.

When the sun rises, these little 4-inch long fish race to get deep below the surface before light makes their silhouette clear and their bodies vulnerable to predators.  They race to get deep with less nutrition in their bodies than their sense of “fullness” tells them they have.  The race to get deep, but with buoyant particles of polypropylene and polyethylene that work against their efforts.

We don’t know entirely what microplastic does to the world’s foraging fish, which make up the bulk of fish biomass in the ocean.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe something tragic.  Should we wait and see or work now to stop the flow of plastic pollution to the sea?  I think the answer is obvious.

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Bird In The Hand And A Brief Respite

Saturday, June 16th, 2012 by alex

birdmolestor

Day four out and we’re still soaked.  The wind has finally subsided to a manageable 15-20 knots,at times we’re even nearly becalmed. But last night we had 30 knots plus, sometimes close to 40 which made for several sail changes through the night. Reef 3, Reef 1, Stay sail down, Yankee out, Reef 2, Stay sail—and so on. Typically at sea so many sail changes are unnecessary in such a short period of time, unless you’re racing.

The seas have organized a little bit too, coming down in size from about 4-5 meters at their peak last night and yesterday. There was a lot of cross swell (two distinct swell directions overlapping), making for sudden harsh jerking. The rice-maker took a serious nose dive, and it’s unclear if it will get out of critical condition. Early this afternoon, the sun came for but a brief moment and the crew quickly took advantage of some much needed heat and light to dry the saturated foul weather gear. Morale has been low, with toilets overflowing and breaking—when it happened you could see the silent contemplating in the crew’s faces—insult to injury countenanced, as well as the logistics of doing business in a 5 gallon bucket.  So far, it hasn’t come to that.

But within minutes of the sun’s peek through the clouds, we had all foul weather gear, socks and shoes up and strung half the length of Sea Dragon, making her look like she was adorned with prayer flags, but the line assembled of much needed protection from the elements. We got just about an hour of sun, though the orb we desire never fully pierced through the clouds. I stood to the bow, filming and shooting (it’s been a rare moment where one can have her camera exposed above deck) the Sea Dragon turned Chinese Junk laundry barge. But then, first Mate Jesse’s head popped up and I knew it was time to get the gear in, as the rains were to come anon. Still stinky, but a bit dryer.

Though the rain is incessant, the sea state has come down, allowing us to begin the science work—we’ve been gathering water samples for Wood’s Hole, that they’ll analyze for Cesium, an indicator of radiation from Fukushima reactor meltdown. We’ve also gathered water samples for previous crew member and toxicologist, Anna Karmen, who will analyze them for persistent organic pollutants.  The sea state is still too big to safely deploy the Manta Trawl but Marcus got the Flying Dutchman, or high speed trawl in at dawn. We’re hugging about 33 degrees latitude as harsh weather exists to the North, where the wind would be on the nose. But eventually we’ll have to steer Sea Dragon that way, facing what we must, as the projected debris field is up between 35 and 40 degrees latitude, about 800 nautical east by north of our present position. We’re trying to steer as steep a broad reach to due east as we can, to keep the wind at our back, and the seas following, hoping that we can hug 33 degrees (or at least not drop to low) as we move across the southern edge of the low pressure system we’re skirting–the remnants of Typhoon Mawar.Mawar’s leftovers dominants nearly the entire North Pacific at present, some 6,000 miles of ocean. The outer bands aren’t calling for much bigger wind that 35 knots, but still, 35 knots and rain can be hell.  The surfers onboard are thinking about how lucky some wave-riders are going to be as this system fans out and delivers clean, long period swell.  As we drop ever so slightly in latitude, we hope that with the eastward longitude we gain that we can get to the other side of the low, and have favorable southwest winds and following seas to push us north to 35-37 degrees north where we’ll investigate the Debris field.  But that’s a week away still.

We’ve also started our marco-debris surveys, taking the middle hour of each watch team’s three to have two people keep their eyes peeled to the ocean to catalog any flotsam as it goes by while the other one steers the ship. On the first leg with the previous crew, the team cataloged just under 300 pieces of flotsam–97% of which was synthetic based, or plastic—which is why the expedition partners refer to this problem as plastic pollution.  We also keep an eye out for wildlife. And as you can see by the picture I took of Paul Sharp, we’ve had a visitor. She circled for about an hour, then landed on the life lines, and soon, was smitten with Paul. No one is able to identify the species with the books we have onboard, but if anyone out there knows, please let us know in the comments and our land based team will send word back to us.  It’s unclear if the bird is sick or just tired, but she seems to be able to fly well still and we’re hoping for the best.  We’ve tried to feed her a slurry of shrimp, but she’s refused. She’s not been catching a ride on Sea Dragon for several hours.

picforblog

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Chasing A Tsunami, Following a Typhoon, It’s On Baby.

Thursday, June 7th, 2012 by alex
departblog
Our expeditions are kind of like summer camp for plastic nerds. Yes, we have real research to conduct, but that doesn’t make us any less nerdy.  And if there is one thing all the partners who brought this voyage to life, Algalita, 5 Gyres, and Pangaea Explorations are at heart, is plastic nerds. And the nerdom grows with each new crew we take, as we build a global ambassadorship to fight plastic pollution. Tracey Read, our crew member from Hong blurted out the other day, “It’s just so exciting,” as the crew was surveying on ungodly amount of plastic crap along the shore in Yokohama Harbor, just adjacent to where Sea Dragon is moored.  Cameras clicked madly and gigabytes upon gigabytes of video were shot as we sifted through the plastic garbage along the key.  We were on our way to Yokohama Beach to conduct a beach transect (A NOAA protocol for monitoring how polluted a beach is over time) and ping some GPS coordinates hoping that we could get some trending from Surfrider Japan in the same location in the future.  As we walked to the train, I asked Tracey– “What’s so exciting?”  She giggled a little bit, “Oh, nothing, it’s just that I finally feel like I’m with my people.” She went on to say that normally, when she looks through plastic on her beach with awe and discrimination, people look at her like she’s nuts—  this point was accentuated by a older Japanese man walking by looking at 11 people on hands and knees passionately photographing garbage along a key in Japan.  His look?  Pure befuddlement.  When I survey the crew why they work on plastic issues, the consensus is largely this— compared to other ocean conservation issues such as over-fishing and acidification, there just aren’t that many people fighting to stop plastic from getting into the ocean. But that’s what we all have in common.  Whether it’s attack dog activism, art, education, facilitating beach cleanups, cutting edge science or creating onramps for engagement amongst the masses, this crew that hails from Hong Kong, Brasil, Switzerland, The UK, Australia, Mexico, The USA, and South Korea all have something in common. The passion to stop the marine eco disaster that is plastic pollution.  As we all know, a tsunami of trash enters our shared ocean everyday, but this expedition will give us some new understanding of how the North Pacific conveyor works, and how fast the garbage moves, what threats it poses, and how fast it breaks into small pieces (hopefully).  This group is all about sharing–  sharing our resources to get the message out there, grab samples for other research institutions, you name it–  we’ll give it away as long as it’s for good. And with this expedition maybe, just maybe, we’ll capture the imagination and the conscious of a global society fascinated by the tsunami debris enough to show them that it doesn’t take a tidal wave to hurt an entire ocean.  All it takes is a tidal wave of indifference and ignorance by 7.5 human inhabitants passively behaving simultaneously, indeed, thinking, ‘how bad can my actions really be? I’m just one person.  Well the affect of humanity on this planet is a matter of scale.  What’s ironic is that I’m a Communications guy, and I’ve done media placements for all our previous voyages, but for some reason this one has every major news agency in the world foaming at the mouth.  Well that’s just fine with me, we’ll give them what they want, let’s just hope that it doesn’t take wide scale devastation of a huge part of a 1st world country to get the world to wake up to the havoc each one of us wreaks, daily. But whatever it takes to get them to care, and then be inspired to create change through education, art, science or attack dog activism, that’s all I’m concerned with. Here’s the onramp all. Walk with us people.
T-minus 24 hours
Our friend Sarah Outen who is cycling and rowing around the world, London to London, is out there, weathering Typhoon Mawar, which has now spun off Northeast of us bearing down on her position.  We’re hoping to swing by and say hi to her, perhaps toss her a bar of dark chocolate. Sarah’s publicist has been in communication with us already and she relayed the message that Sarah is encountering a tremendous amount of debris during her row.  When briefing an anxious to get to sea crew about this, who has now been living on Sea Dragon for a week in port,  I’m met with expressions that are a mix of joy and horror–  which is precisely what one feels when inside a so called gyre ‘garbage patch.’  The joy doesn’t come from apprehending a sea polluted, but from the ability to bear witness to it, document it, and share those images around the world in hopes of making it stop.  Or in this case, it’s fuel for people who have already dedicated their lives to making it stop.  The horror felt is the reality of scale that we’re talking about.  Having myself traveled to three of the ocean gyres already, witnessing the same thing in each, the one thing I can’t adequately describe to anyone who hasn’t spent a month at sea is this–  the ocean is BIG.  It may some trite, but it’s that simple–  the ocean is BIG.  Sea Dragon looks impressive tied up to a dock in a harbor, and almost anyone that walks by her stops to wave, take a gander, and admire her beauty that aesthetically is derived from a precise mixture of form and function.  Sure, she’s easy on the eye, but she also looks like she can handle anything. It’s her prowess that her lines suggest.  But still, out there she and her crew are nothing. We’re  a needle piercing an exponent on a universe of haystacks.  Sea Dragon will keep us safe, and that is her duty, but we’re all small or egos and our ship against the backdrop of the mighty blue.  Where the cosmic heebie-geebies will set in for this virgin crew is when they feel that space around them, and that they can find the stain of their species everywhere out there.  Whether it comes from a natural disaster or from a momentary indifference or carelessness, when moving through an amount of space that confounds the senses, the rough beast they will know is a calculus of pollution that puzzles the mind, and burdens the heart.  That realization will sink into their faces in a profound way and will cause them despair.  Real, utter, poignant despair.  But that will not break them.  What will endure when they step to land in Maui is this–  an incredible empowerment to be the agent of change in a world recruiting them to action.  They will have a vantage few know, but they will feel a tremendous duty to share their stories so that they will live beyond them and empower others.  Their work will be more confident, more informed. This is why we do what we do. And my job is to empower you, gentle reader, by taking you along for the ride on our partners blogs.
Tomorrow we sail.

Stiv J. Wilson
The 5 Gyres Institute
5gyres.org
mobile: 503.913.7381
skype: agentstiv
twitter.com/5gyres
twitter.com/agentstiv
There Is No Away.

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Meet the Crew–Leg 2 Asia Pacific Expedition

Monday, June 4th, 2012 by alex

Marcus Eriksen – Research Expedition Leader
Marcus Eriksen received his Ph.D. in Science Education from University of Southern California in 2003, months before embarking on a 2000-mile, 5-month journey down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft.  His experience on the river led to a career studying the ecological impacts of plastic marine pollution, which has included expeditions sailing 25,000 miles through all 5 subtropical gyres to discover new garbage patches of plastic pollution in the Southern Hemisphere.  Though still rafting, his most recent adventure sent him and a colleague across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii on JUNK, a homemade raft floating on 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessina airplane fuselage as a cabin (junkraft.com).  The journey, 2,600 miles in 88 days, brought attention to the work of the 5 Gyres Institute, the organization he co-founded with his wife Anna Cummins.  Together, they co-direct 5 Gyres, which is committed to marine conservation through continued research, education and adventure, studying and lecturing about the plague of plastic waste in our watersheds and in the sea.  Formerly Director of Project Development for Algalita, he has served as Research Expedition Leader for investigation of the plastic marine pollution issue in all five major gyres of the world over the past couple of years, most recently, last summer on the Algalita 2011 Expedition from Honolulu to Vancouver, B.C.His first book, titled “My River Home” (Beacon Press, 2007) chronicled his Mississippi River experience paralleled with his tour as a Marine in the 1991 Gulf War.  In 2007 he joined board of the Mehadi Foundation and contributes his time to help the foundation assist US veterans and provide clean water to schools in Iraq.  He also hosts “Commando Weather,” a series of public service announcements about the science of weather and survival, for the Weather Channel.  When not rafting, he enjoys time with Anna and is awaiting the birth of their daughter.

Rodrigo Olson – Skipper
Born in Mexico, Rodrigo has spent his life sailing the oceans of the world in search of some of the planet’s most elusive whale species. He has a degree in Oceanography and was Captain of the famous research vessel ‘Odyssey’ which spent five years studying marine mammals around the globe. He has covered almost 300,000 nautical miles on sailing boats. A highly experienced diver, his ability to free-dive to great depths has resulted in some fantastic footage of his interaction with many species.

Jessie Horton – First Mate
Jesse is an artist, videographer, boat captain and submarine pilot, hailing from Colorado to Costa Rica. He specializes in documenting “hard to reach issues,” like pollution at the bottom of the ocean and wildlife in inaccessible areas. He’s recently documented shark finning in Asia and Central America and worked to help reduce plastic consumption in the South Pacific islands. He’s filmed Great Whites without a cage in South Africa; chased poachers from marine parks in Central America; regularly holds his breath for up to five minutes while making free dives; and has survived a brain tumor. In his “downtime”, he competes in 24-hour endurance/adventure races with a best finish in “only” 4th place.

Stiv Wilson - Communications and Media Coordinator
Stiv is a freelance environmental journalist/photojournalist and the Communications Director for The 5 Gyres Institute.  He is also an ambassador for The Surfrider Foundation and an advisor to The United Nations Safe Planet campaign on hazardous chemicals in the environment.  He spends about half his time at sea with The 5 Gyres team, and when not at sea he lectures on plastic pollution around the country.  He resides (or at least does laundry in between trips) at his home in Portland, Oregon.

Mandy Barker
Living in Leeds with a family of 4, Mandy has been committed to raising awareness about plastic marine debris.  Her interests revolve around nature, walking and exploring the outdoors.  She is a graphic designer and photographer with hopes to raise awareness of plastic pollution through her art.

Lindsey Hoshaw
Lindsey is a freelance environmental journalist based in Boston. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Globe and Scientific American among others. She maintains a blog on the Forbes network and is currently working on a story about fog-harvesting in Morocco. Her interests include running, bocce and competitive pasta-eating.

Laura Iten
Laura is a 20-year old student from Switzerland. She has been passionate about nature from early childhood on. Most of her free time she has spent hiking through the woods on horseback. Her passion for horses, natural horsemanship and the classical art of riding is a very important ingredient of her life and a never-ending resource of joy and peace. Even though it might appear so, she doesn’t want to become a vet, but has taken up courses at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland to follow her dream of becoming an environmental engineer. During her gap year she participated at the Talent Forum of Swiss Youth in Science as well as at the World Resources Forum. She was invited to intern at the World Resources Forum Association where she had the opportunity to work with Bas de Leeuw, former UNEP. It was a very interesting time to connect with industry, research and politicians. Besides horsemanship, she also loves to go rock climbing, skiing, diving, hiking and other outdoors activities. She’s looking forward to learning from the experiences of other crewmembers and spending a great time on board Sea Dragon.

Kelvin Lee
Kelvin is a videographer/cinematographer from Korea Broadcasting System in Seoul, Korea.

Dani Lerario
Dani is a 28 year-old biologist from Sao Paulo, Brazil.  She was born and raised in a huge city but has always been enthusiastic about nature and is always up for a new adventure.  She has been working in the environmental field for 6 years with a recent post graduation on waste management.

Nick Mallos
Nick earned an Honors B.S. in Biology and Marine Science from Dickinson College. His research investigated migration and residency patterns of juvenile lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Nick earned his Master’s Degree from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, concentrating on Coastal Environmental Management. His thesis examined the efficacy of volunteers in resource management and invoking citizen science in marine conservation. Nick collaborated with Duke’s Marine Mammal Lab on a research expedition to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands in 2010, to examine marine debris impacts on marine organisms inhabiting Midway Atoll and the surrounding reef ecosystem.
Shortly after joining Ocean Conservancy in August 2010, Nick joined Project Kaisei on its voyage to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre to investigate the accumulation of debris at-sea. Nick manages a diverse range of marine debris projects at Ocean Conservancy including International Coastal Cleanup data analyses, at-sea research, and an inter-disciplinary working group on marine debris. He is also actively engaged in public education regarding ocean trash and the importance of waste minimization through social media and outreach. He strives to work at the crossroads of science, education, industry, and policy; establishing a dialogue with these entities devoted to reducing one-time use disposable goods.

Tracey Read
Although originally from Australia, Tracey has been living in Hong Kong for the last 7 years. Through the environmental group DB Green she organizes monthly community cleanups on a number of local beaches and is a volunteer speaker in several HK schools, raising awareness about the plastic in our oceans. Previously working as a Registered Nurse she now owns an online retail store selling eco party supplies for children www.missgreenpartyqueen.com and is married with two children – 7 & 4.

Paul Sharp
Paul is a photographer, environmentalist and wildlife rescuer from Perth, Western Australia.  Growing up on Western Australia’s amazing coastline and being involved with marine animal and seabird rescue from a young age gave him a strong appreciation for the ocean and highlighted the increasing threats to our seas.  By joining the Algalita Marine Research Institute and 5 Gyres expedition, Paul hopes to not only help in increasing understanding of plastic in our oceans, he sees this as an opportunity to build relationships with fellow plastic pollution activists and environmentalists from around the globe.
In 2010 Paul founded the Two Hands Project in response to the growing plastic pollution he saw on Australian coastlines and waterways. See http://www.facebook.com/twohandsproject

Shannon Waters
Shannon currently serves as the Volunteer Coordinator in the Public Education Program at the California Coastal Commission. In this role she leads communication with program partners in the coordination of the annual Coastal Cleanup Day Program and manages the year-round Adopt-A-Beach Program, which together engage over 100,000 volunteers annually in beach, shoreline, and creek-side cleanups. Shannon interacts daily with members of the public and regularly represents the Coastal Commission’s Public Education Program at public events, and leads the development of communications via the Public Education Program’s quarterly e-newsletter, Coast 4U Quarterly.

In 2009, she gained certification as a Coastal Program Analyst (CPA), scoring within the 94 the percentile. Prior to her work at the California Coastal Commission, Shannon served as the Education Coordinator for the non-profit I Love A Clean San Diego, providing and developing environmental education to thousands of San Diego’s youth, and developing an after-school program centered on watershed education and storm water pollution prevention.
During a ten-month period teaching English in Madrid, Spain, she was awarded teacher of the month for May 2008. She received her BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Political Science and International Relations in 2006, where she served as the Publicity Chair of the campus-wide Environmental Affairs Board.

Shannon is active in her local Surfrider chapter in San Francisco as a member of both the Rise Above Plastics and Earth Day 2012 subcommittees. As an ocean enthusiast, she enjoys any activity spent in the water, especially swimming, and recently became a certified SCUBA diver.

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Volunteering in Fukushima-

Friday, June 1st, 2012 by alex

Hi everyone,

8 of us traveled north of Fukushima to volunteer with a relief
organization.  We helped an 80 yr. old woman by shoveling 5 tons of
rock away from the back of her house.  We spent the night, then rented
a car to drive further north to visit some devastated sites.  It’s
unbelievable.

Today, the 31st, the crew is trickling into the Sea Dragon, one by
one.  The plan is to have everyone on the boat tonight.  We’ll spend
tomorrow going through immigration, then depart early on the 2nd.

Cheers,

Marcus Eriksen, PhD
Executive Director
5 Gyres Institute
5gyres.org
323-395-1843
skype: marcus..eriksen
marcuseriksen.com

Tsunami M. Eriksen pre-Leg 2

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From our captain on the Sea Dragon…

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 by alex

Our position at 20:00 GMT today is 26 47 N, 150 21.4. Our heading is 310 Mag, and winds are less than 10 knots from the South. It has been light fot the past few days so we have been sailing slow or motoring with sails up at times to help speed. We are trying to get into Japan the eve of the 20th of May. We have 685 nm to go.

All is well, we have been able to trawl a lot since the Marshalls as the weather has been quite mild. There is good amount of data collected so far and lots of good footage from the canadian crew and from us. Couple days ago we went underwater to film one of the net balls we found floating about. Yesterday we had few Minke whales near the boat and there has also been a lot of yellow fin tuna and birds with us all day yesterday, sign of productive waters. Plastic wise we saw also a lot yesterday floating here and there. It is all being documented.

Rodrigo-239x300

Rodrigo Olson–Skipper

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“There’s an Masked Booby sitting on top of it,” Cynthia says

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 by alex

25.13N, 153.56E

May 14th

The New Reef

“Net ball!” Hank yelled.

It turns out to be a 500lb ball of netting, rope and line from over 80 sources, all different, and fragments of commercial products, including 3 toothbushes, 1 cigarette lighter and two plastic straws.
The bulk of these, and several pieces of chewed bottles, bottle caps and assorted food wrappers, are lodged in a tangled gill net. The whole thing from underwater looks like an upside-down floral
arrangement, with lead weights taking some lines straight down, and foam floats taking lines outward.

Fish are everywhere – mahimahi, amberjack, triggerfish – circle beneath the net ball. Three fish are stuck inside in varying stages of decomposition. These nets catch more fish when they are lost than when they were owned.

After a long dive around it, we haul it above the deck to shake it out. More fish, a goby, 5 frog fish, hundreds of crabs, a shrimp, worms, nudibranchs, anemone – Hank Carson from U. of Hawaii collects
26 species in all.

There’s great diversity of live and plastic, creating habitat where it wasn’t before. The reaction is awe at the life. When a dozen fish swim under you for shelter, you can’t help but laugh. When I pull a dead
triggerfish out of the netting, I cringe at the thought of the thousands or millions of fish all these tangled nets have killed after being lost. Above all else, I have the same felling I get when you visit someplace beautiful, like the Grand Canyon or Everglades, and you see that someone dumped a pile of trash on the side of the road. It’s the sense that something is taken away from all of us – the knowledge that there are places in the world, so valuable, so wild, that taking more than a memory would be unthinkable.

Hank Carson on net ball

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