I spent the past couple days in Vail, Colorado, invited by the very sophisticated Vail Symposium to do a talk leading off its six-week long Unlimited Adventurer series (two friends, Anne Doubliet and Chris Swain will fill the hall in coming weeks!).
It was another great night, 225 people filling the beautiful mountainside stone-and-wood Donovan Pavilion. While it may seem a stretch to come to 8,000 feet to talk about the health of the world’s seas, it was quickly clear that the crowd got the connection. No matter what altitude you live, if you vacation at the beach or eat fish or love watching the sunset at that place where blue meets blue, you have a responsibility to be concerned and interested in what’s happening to the world’s ocean … which this crowd definitely understood.
Earlier in the day I had visited the Berry Creek Middle School in near by Edwards, spending an hour with seventy-five seventh graders. Not too surprisingly, they got it too! At the encouragement of their fantastically energetic science teacher – Vail valley native, Michael Moser – they had each written out a question in advance. The show was so fun and over long I never quite got around to answering their written questions, but I’ve just spent an hour reviewing them. Here are some of the highlights, and responses:
Do you like to travel or do you travel because you have to?
Funny, I used to like the physical act of traveling a lot more. Now I far prefer the ‘being there’ versus the ‘getting there.’
Do you miss your house?
Absolutely. I have a beautiful home in the Hudson Valley that has grown and expanded during the past 20 years, getting only more home-like. It’s important to me to have a comfortable place to return to, given how much I travel … otherwise I’m afraid I might just never come home.
Is there any type of dangerous algae that you’ve had to confront?
No. Though in the Aleutian Islands we did try kelp salads, pulled straight from the sea.
Did you have to eat in your kayak and if you did, How?
We often eat snacks in the kayaks while we’re paddling – nuts, chocolate, protein bars – but never full-course meals. We did, once, have to sleep in them in Gabon when we ran out of land to camp on.
Have you ever been in the emergency room?
Not since I was in the seventh grade myself, when I slashed open my fingers on broken glass at Forest Road Elementy School.
What are some interesting stuff that you have learned throughout your trips?
Sharks don’t have skeletons, thus when picked up all their organs slide down. Not to pee too close to hungry sled dogs. And not to soak staph infected limbs in salt water.
How do you know all about the girls and boys?
Not sure I ever will.
Why do you write about your life?
I’m sure there are many adults who might ask the same question.
What is the most cool thing you’ve done?
Swimming in the 29 degree Southern Ocean.
By seeing the world in a different perspective, what do you think the biggest problem facing our world’s society?
That’s a big and important question. Given that my expertise is the world’s ocean, I think the biggest educational challenge around the world regarding our seas is to teach people that the ocean is not just some big trash dump where everything – everything – can be deposited.
How does it feel to know that people all over the world admire you?
Aaah, youth! It’s all relative of course. I’m 54, they are 12, 13. I’ve gained any assumed admiration solely by grace of age … and the fact, from their perspective, that I have a very fun website loaded with beautiful photos and videos which in their estimation equals … admiration.
Je va Senegal ouelle est joutin ides lile comte …
This from a French speaking, African native who wanted to talk about the health of the world’s islands.
Can I go to Alaska with you? Can I make money with you?
Influenced by our friend from Senegal, bon chance!
How do you become famouse?
See above, re: admiration.
Would you ever like to do something else from travel?
Like most, I think often about my choice of career and 99.9 percent of the time I feel completely thrilled by the path I’ve followed. On occasion, though, especially when exhausted by airplane travel, I gaze out the window and imagine trading lives with one of the baggage handlers. Which sounds good for about … three minutes … when I’m reminded of just how fortunate I am to do work that I truly love and that continues to school me.
Which book that you have written is your favorite? Why?
Well, I’ve never had children but I imagine in their heart of hearts most parents have a favorite … so I’ll go out on a limb and say the brand new WILDEBEEST IN A RAINSTORM, officially published tomorrow (February 1). A collection of profiles I’ve written over the past two decades of some of our most intriguing conservationists, adventurers, shagbags and wanderers … it reminds me, story by story, of just how lucky I’ve been, to see the world in part through the eyes of some of the greatest minds of our age.
Are you proud of what you have been doing?
Yes.
A few nights ago in Santa Barbara I had the good fortune of meeting Captain Charles Moore, the discoverer of the amazingly well known garbage patches in the North Pacific Gyre – the 600 square mile of circulating ocean where they found plastic in the surface waters outweighing zooplankton six to one. Virtually every talk I give, someone has read about the patch and mentions it to me.
Moore’s discovery was ten years ago this summer, aboard his 50-foot aluminum hulled catamaran the “Algalita.” When we met I asked what he was up to now and he suggested a phone call to explain, which we had yesterday. Turns out he’s planning to head back to the North Pacific this summer, to revisit the area near Hawaii that he and his team sampled a decade ago and then attempt to go further west.
Samples from the "Algalita's" catch
“I’m convinced the amount of plastic in the ocean in that part of the world is doubling every ten years and I want to go back and prove it. But I’m also convinced the area to the west between Hawaii and the International Date Line is even worse.” Again the “Algalita” will drag collection nets to gauge just how much plastic is swirling around on the surface of the gyre and carry back samples of fish to assess both toxin levels and plastic ingestion.
“It’s an amazing thing to see,” he says from his office in Long Beach, “there’s so much plastic in the sea out there it feels like you could almost step off the boat and walk on it. It’s not quite that thick … but close.”
His Algalita Marine Research Foundation has committed to studying some of the planet’s most remote parts of the ocean, which is not inexpensive. Like most environmental research groups, he’s right now patching together monies for the two-month long expedition. It’s revelatory to me that though his initial research and his Garbage Patch have attracted international attention yet he still finds it hard to find funding for his continued research. Given my interest in the subject of ocean pollution – particularly plastic pollution, which we’ve seen all around the world – we’re pondering how OCEANS 8 and our film production arm might get involved, which I’m sure will happen at some level.
For more Moore and the “Algalita,” check this collection of blogs on the subject of plastic and the ocean.
I do sixty, seventy talks a year in settings ranging from the Grosvernor Hall at the National Geographic Society to the occasional noisy barroom. I never know in advance whether two or one thousand people will show up and rarely have a clue who’ll be in the audience. I’m always surprised, most often favorably.
I drove up to Santa Barbara for the weekend, from Los Angeles where we are wrapping the edit of our Antarctica film (“Terra Antarctica, Re-Discovering the Seventh Continent’), to meet the Southern California chapter of the Explorer’s Club. It was a super-charged weekend in part because the Club’s Board of Directors was in town simultaneously to elect a new president, which it did.
At the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum
The highlight of a small dinner on Friday night was reconnecting with my friend Jean-Michel Cousteau, who lives nearby and is also spending his days locked in a small editing room, finalizing two new films – “Sea Ghosts” about belugas and “The Call of the Killer Whale” about orcas – for his Oceans Future Society which air on April 8 and April 22, respectively. His remarks to the Board were warm and succinct and reminded everyone not to forget about educating our children about the state of environmental affairs and our oceans, but also their grandparents. “Generally they have plenty of time on their hands and love spending it with their grandchildren. So don’t forget to talk to them too.”
Saturday’s night talk at the beautiful Santa Barbara Natural History Museum was well received by another highly charged crowd of 200. Again, you never know who’ll show up for your talks, and I was stunned afterwards as people introduced themselves to meet a former head of NASA, a member of Thor Heyerdahl’s “Kon Tiki” team, an Antarctic veteran who’d wintered over in 1956-57 as part of the International Geophysical Year and other real adventurers and scientists.
I was particularly impressed when a man rushed up with a small gym bag and pulled out a couple jars filled with seawater and bits of plastic, which he had collected in the North Pacific. This was Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, whose pioneering work dragging nets around the North Pacific Central Gyre – the so-called East and West Plastic Patches – has identified that there is six times as much plastic as zooplankton in its surface waters. Given my own recent experiences about the incredible abundance of plastic in our ocean, meeting Moore was a true highlight.
Photo, Gene Arias
I’ve been sparked by a couple recent events to vow to change one thing in my life in this still new year.
As I’ve wandered the globe during the past decade, studying its ocean and coastlines, one of the biggest problems I see everywhere – from the Adriatic to the Scotia seas, the coastlines of Vietnam to Chile – is plastic pollution. You’ve seen it too, I’m sure. Detritus washed or thrown off fishing boats and tankers, cruise boats and yachts. Garbage washed up from waste dumps situated too near the sea. Cities and resorts overbuilding right on the edge of the coast. But it doesn’t have to be a crowded place to result in beach trash; one of the most plasticked beaches I’ve ever seen was on remote Carcass Island in the Falklands just the other day.
While talking about the mess that plastic pollution makes of the world’s beaches is a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily do much to help. Often I’m asked what individuals can do to help in regard to the handful of things killing our ocean and coastlines: over fishing, climate change … and plastic pollution.
That’s a tough question to answer. Education and enforcement of existing laws are big needs, but tough for the man-on-the-street to impact. There are things you can do around the house, your neighborhood, in your daily life that can make a difference. though And I do believe that millions of small efforts can affect real change (See: Election/Barack Obama/November 2008.)
For example, I’ve been contemplating a cold turkey approach to plastic and paper bags for a long time. In the U.S. alone, more than 100 billion cheap plastic bags are distributed every year, bags which never really go away, many of which end up in our waterways. Less than one percent are recycled. Many countries (Bangladesh, South Africa, Uganda, even parts of China) and cities (San Francisco, London, Mumbai) have already banned plastic bags; others – like Ireland – have instituted a plastic-tax. New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg is still hoping for a six cent per bag tax.
For me, the combination of having walked along that plastic-trashed beach in the Falklands, the new President’s call to individual action and having seen flimsy plastic bags scattered all over the world in trees, coral reefs, nests and along highways and coastlines … from here on out I’m refusing all plastic (and paper) bags … which means valiantly trying to remember to stuff one of the dozen cloth bags I’ve got in my truck into my pocket whenever applicable.
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