9/27/2016 2 Comments AOKSafety 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] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 All photos taken under NOAA NMFS Permit No. 16632
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9/26/2016 0 Comments What it is. Settling back into the studio; wading through pictures and the gravity of my recent experience. This NOAA article nicely sums up some of the work the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program got up to this Summer and what I was doing out in the Pacific for 4+ months [Pg.2]. All photos taken under NOAA NMFS Permit No. 16632
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