AOK

Disposable lighter installation - Shot with Zero Image 2000 - 120 Fuji Provia

Disposable lighter installation - Shot with Zero Image 2000 - 120 Fuji Provia

Disposable lighter installation. Double exposure - Shot with Zero Image 2000 - 120 Fuji Provia

Safety check-ins via satellite e-mail with Honolulu went: Monday, Wednesday + Friday before noon. A simple, ‘AOK’ would have sufficed. But I was a newbie and everything was conjecture. And so the Wednesday AOK of which I was in charge became part prose, part haiku.

PHR WEDS AOK [+ some]
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The low angle of the morning sun absorbs into the marine debris that's scattered along nearly every surface of this tiny island in the middle of the ocean, sparkling all the way down the beach like glitter. Some days it is easy to put on your blinders and step past and over it and others not so much. The most challenging aspect of being here is not the lack of infrastructure, the salt water baths or limited communications but rather trying to process the exorbitant amount of garbage that washes ashore; not to mention what remains in the ocean. Watching the wildlife try to adapt to living with our waste, playing with it, getting entangled in it, is enough to turn ones stomach.
 
Last week I made an onsite installation of the disposable lighters that we've collected. As I was setting up I found a seal entangled in a mess of line and the day before the skeleton of a Laysan Finch stuck in a wad of monofilament. We've picked up nearly 9 bagsters of marine debris around the atoll and cannot see a noticeable difference. With more debris washing ashore with every tide, I see this ecosystem indefinitely smothered with our litter. 

All are well.
 
-April + Team
 
------ Weds Haiku ------
 
Ubiquitously
Sea and sky wrapped around me
Oh! The solace here

S. Youngstrom removing marine debris from shoreline where it is a high risk for wildlife entanglement - Shot with Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera - 120 Kodak T-Max 400

Interior of Southeast island. Marine debris reaches the interior of each of the atoll's six low-lying islands from storm surges and high winds. Shot with Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera - 120 Kodak Portra 400

Stranded buoys from the fishing industry are popular perches for Boobies. Shot with Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera - 120 Kodak T-Max 400

A plastic ring stuck on the beak of a Black-footed albatross chick. [The ring was removed]

Propane tank washed ashore.

Black-footed albatross chick amongst floats.

Laysan finch skeleton found in pile monofilament. The Laysan finch is both endangered and endemic to the region.

Wad of marine debris line full of fishing lures. A dangerous entanglement hazard for marine and terrestrial wildlife alike.

Black-footed albatross chick nestles into marine debris.

Frigatebirds can often be found perching on marine debris.

The stomach contents of an albatross chick. Fishing lure + plastic.

The marine debris is both large and small. Here Frigatebirds perch on a busted boat that washed ashore.

All photos taken under NOAA NMFS Permit No. 16632