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March 17, 2010 – At Sea, 08º 32’S, 081º 52’W
By Herb McCormick
Everyone remembers the famous scene in the movie The Graduate when the character played by a young Dustin Hoffman tries to come to grips with his future. Without a clue as to what the world ahead has in store for him – or how he could possibly engage it in any meaningful way – he encounters an older, “wiser” man who sums up all the possibilities of the coming decades – in terms of livelihood, security and prosperity – in one single, tantalizing word.
“Plastics,” he says, quietly, conspiratorially.
Hoffman, unsure, considers this a moment, but he got the message. “Plastics,” he replies.
The Graduate was obviously an iconic movie, one for the ages, but that one-word line of dialog – though meant to be humorous and ironic – may have been its most prescient moment. For when it came to the very basics of civilization, the needs and wants of your societies and their interwoven, interwined economies, from the 1960s to this very day, the guy was absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent correct.
Plastics.
Of course, these days, plastics – and its neighbor in the “p” section of your dictionary, not to mention in the fabric of our shared existence: petroleum and petroleum-based products – are simply everywhere. But do you really want to see plastics, to understand their reach and span and remarkable, mind-bending durability?
Well, do as we have. Go to sea.
Today on Ocean Watch, our tiny spot on the Pacific Ocean is framed in beauty and wonder. Just before noon, about a mile ahead, the waters began to boil as if we were approaching a shallow reef. Considering we were about two hundred miles off the coast of South America, over a deep expanse of waterborne canyons known as the Peru Trench – where depths range from 14,000 to over 20,000 feet – this was unlikely. But it had to be something.
Suddenly, a black form broke the surface, then another, then a half dozen more. Porpoises! Hundreds of porpoises! It was a stampede of sea life, at least a half-mile long and several hundred yards wide, crossing our bow and sprinting, soaring and leaping westward into the Pacific. This captivating show by the acrobats of the ocean was riveting enough, but just when you couldn’t imagine it getting any better, there was the sight of an unmistakable geyser spurting skyward from a massive, sounding whale that was riding shotgun to the herd. Coupled with last evening’s stunning, clear, moonless night, with all the heaven’s blinking above, the first days of our light-air voyage to the Galápagos Islands has been nothing less than a visual cavalcade.
Happily, there hasn’t been a scrap of plastic in sight.
That wasn’t the case during the time when we were moored off the Peruvian seaside town of Callao, where an endless stream of plastic garbage bags streamed past Ocean Watch, and we crossed our fingers every time we started our generator to charge our batteries that the raw-water intake valve wouldn’t be fouled by the refuse of a mini-market. Miraculously, it never was.
And that most certainly was not the case just a few short miles north of our anchorage. The day before we departed, our David Thoreson met a professional delivery skipper from Florida who, on the night before arriving in Callao with a sailboat he was delivering from Ft. Lauderdale, sailed through a literal river of plastic and garbage. The sailor, Captain J. Miranda, left early the next morning, so we never had a chance to view his photos, but he did send an email message on what he’d seen.
“I talked to you yesterday about the garbage we found off the coast of Peru about thirty miles north of your location and about twenty nautical miles off the coast,” he wrote. “As I told you, at times there was so much of it around us that we had to go off the autopilot to dodge it. The garbage seems to be partly processed (through a grinder) but the size of the chunks of it and just the sheer volume of it raises some eyebrows.”
That’s right: this stuff isn’t the current-borne flotsam wafting off the coast from the massive metropolis of Lima. Commercial vessels are deliberately dumping it.
“The crews of the boats do it to avoid dumping charges at the ports they visit,” Captain Miranda continues. “Raising awareness of this to the crews of the ships doing the dumping is not going to resolve it. The solution will be found in the partnership between the ports and the recycling companies. If you can eliminate the dumping fees (pay them through avenues other than the ship companies) and reward the crew’s recycling efforts (through cash incentives), then you are moving in the right direction.
“Where to get the money for it?” wonders Captain Miranda. He suggests, “marketing campaigns of worldwide awareness. (For instance) if all the people driving Japanese cars would realize that their purchases are (indirectly) financing the killing of whales for the satisfaction of the Japanese whale-eating market, things (might) be quite different.”
We were delayed in leaving Peru, and though we tried to locate the seaborne garbage dump in question, we passed the location in darkness and failed to do so. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t encounter plenty of plastic trash on the beaches near Callao. Just as he did in Miami, in ports all through South America, and outside Lima, during our stay in Peru David T continued to record the sad truth about the cleanliness of the coastlines – or distinct lack thereof – in a series of heartbreaking images, some of which accompany this report.
David’s pictures bring to mind the work of another environmental photographer, the Seattle-based photojournalist Chris Jordan, whose images of dead albatrosses in the vast Pacific – their skeletal remains cast in the framework of the plastic junk they ingested, which put an end to their lives – tells the story about what’s happening with greater frequency not only out at sea, but everywhere birds take flight, in sad, telling detail. (Jordan’s subject matter extends beyond wildlife, but is all topical, important and related, and though often disturbing, is well worth seeking out.)
And, of course, the infamous Pacific Gyre – a swirling, gargantuan whirlpool of rubbish borne endlessly along the currents of the wide Pacific Ocean – is something we may yet encounter before our voyage is through.
So, yes, despite the glorious scenery, the good company and the fine weather, like “The Graduate,” today we’ve been thinking about plastics. They sure do add a lot to a complete, consumerist life!
Unless, of course, they’re killing you.
-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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Herb,
Good job showing the world the problem with dumping at sea. I concur that incentives for recycling will help, but they should be balanced with enormous fines imposed on ships that dump. An aggressive “anonymous whistleblower” reward program would perhaps help expose the culprits. Organizations that raise massive funds to “save the earth” might funnel some of that money into the reward program. Couple that with money from the fines, and the reward budget would blossom. Make a painful example of a few ships, and it will slow the rest of them from dumping. With a whistleblower reward system, you don’t need outside enforcement organizations (ocean cops), because a few hundred-thou in the hands of a deck crew member who brings solid evidence of dumping violations will allow him to retire for a while and not have to worry about recriminations. Protect the anonymity and reward the whistleblowers. And also offer recycling incentives. Give potential violators multiple significant financial reasons to be responsible stewards of the seas. That might work.
Rich