Signs of Spring

Time to celebrate biodiversity and given that it's officially spring in the Northern Hemisphere, today we pay homage to an incredible natural phenomenon. Artist Chris Jordan is at Midway Island, the location of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and the home of the world's largest population of Laysan Albatrosses. He is also filming an environmental tragedy because despite the remoteness of the island, plastic garbage (bottle caps, broken toys, lighters and so on) from all around the Pacific floats nearby and is mistaken for food by the parent albatrosses who then feed it to the chicks. With a bellyful of plastic, many of the chicks don't survive.

Here's a great 10-minute clip to show just how many birds have been nesting there this spring:


Here's a shorter clip a few weeks later showing several hatchlings:


I have blogged about plastic and Chris Jordan's work previously here or you can go
to the source and see the effects of our plastic debris at his website.

The Problem with Plastic

The problem with plastic is that it doesn't go away. It stays and stays and stays. A plastic water bottle can take as long as 450 years to break down in a landfill (according to a nice summary by the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center). Worse, if the bottle doesn't make it to the landfill and is discarded on the street as litter, it can wind up getting washed into rivers and ultimately the ocean where it becomes a problem for marine life who mistake bottle caps, lighters and other plastic for food. Birds with a stomach full of plastic soon die.

You can check out what Captain Charles Moore, who spoke at BU last fall,  has been doing with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to raise awareness about the problem.

You can also follow what photographer Chris Jordan has been doing on Midway Island. The above photo is from his project to document the effects of plastic on albatrosses on Midway, which is 2000 miles from other land but whose beaches are littered with plastic. He is making a film, Journey to Midway, which will be released this summer. Here's the trailer, and another trailer, quite a bit less polished. In fact, why not follow the project by subscribing to his Youtube channel.

Okay, one more: here's an incredible video of an albatross dying juxtaposed with a tern chick, set to music by Baaba Maal.

Given all this, maybe we need much tighter restrictions and fines on litter?