NORTH PACIFIC GYRE
An expedition to the heart of the North Pacific Garbage patch
research
Photography courtesy of Andrew Newman - www.wheresnewmo.com
22nd of July – Training Day
The first day out on the water was a practise session. We motored out of the marina in Ko Olina before letting the sails fly and cruising up the west cost of Oahu. This was my first taste of sailing and it was grand. We went through a few different manoeuvres and ended with a safety drill on what to do if some one falls off the boat. The victim in this case was a flotation device with attached flag. When we eventually realised what was going on, we began pointing at our fallen companion. The helmsman made a hard right; cutting wind from the main sail and buying us time to mount a rescue. I was called to a winch to start the gruelling task of pulling the sail in. Once accomplished, I returned to the others to keep pointing out at the flag. Despite it being a relatively calm day, the waves no more than two feet, it was incredibly hard to spot the flag. The glare of the sun hitting the water added to the difficulty. The others had not let it out of sight, their arms still stretched out towards it. Even with the others diligence to aid me, it took me minuets to spot the jettisoned float. Once I had it back in my sight I Joined the others in pointing at it until the boat was along side it. We finished the manoeuvre by hauling our half drowned rubber ring to safety. The experience hardened my resolve to remain dry aboard the ship for next three weeks.
26th of July – Day 4
After four days at sea, I finally braved my first shower. With the onset of seasickness on day two, I’ve feared to go into the galley (kitchen/living room). I’ve been taking seasickness tablets to combat the effects but the lurching of the cabins, without a horizon to focus on, proved too much. I began my reintroduction to the lower levels in increments. First I had to make it to the head (the end of the boat where the toilets are). After a few successes I moved on to the intermediate task of brewing a cup of tea. Being before my 2AM shift on watch and the vehemence with which the boat tossed me around, this was probably the single most difficult cup of tea I’ve ever made. It was a difficulty made worse by having to use loose tea and a hob top kettle. Despite the adversity, my tea was a success! I now faced my third challenge below deck, a shower. As you can guess, a shower on-board of a moving sailing boat in the middle of an Ocean isn’t going to be anything like a shower back on land. The aforementioned head of the boat houses the toilets. These handy pods double up as showers. Merely lock the door, attach a safety rope across it then pull the shower curtain shut. The tap head can be pulled out of it’s housing with a short hose attached. Your job is to then clean yourself down with out loosing your footing and ejecting yourself, naked and soapy, into the hall way. Once you’re satisfied that the edge has been taken off your odour, you can begin the next novel stage, pumping. Pull pack a small plastic panel, withdraw the lever stowed on the side, fit it to the mechanism and start pumping away all your dirty shower water that’s pooled beneath the wooden grate. And there you have it! You should now be one clean(ish) sailor. As long as you didn’t miss time it with your medication and the seasickness took you midway.
On the fourth day, Andrew and I took the 10pm - 2am shift on watch. It started with a sunset of golden majesty and transitioned into the clearest night yet. It had already occurred to me that that, being surrounded by an endless blue horizon, how insignificant we were in this vast seascape. That night the feeling was multiplied tenfold but the sprawling universe above us. We could see into the heart of the Milky Way. Jupiter stood sentinel next to the Scorpio constellation. Meteors flew across the sky, the boldest of them bursting into flame just above the horizon. At 12am we were given a final astronomical treat. The crescent moon rose out of the ocean, burning bright orange before fading to yellow and then settling opal white.
27th of July – Day 5
The winds and seas are still. For 360 degrees there is nothing but a thin blue line beneath the clouds. We’ve fired up the engine and we’re now plodding along at 5 knots. The calm has given us the opportunity to explore the gyre. We entered into “Garbage Watch!” The skipper, Eric, was on the market for some new fenders (large inflatable balloons that you tie to the side of your boat when docking) whilst I was on the prowl for some discarded rope. I sat on the bow of the ship, keeping vigil for anything in the water. After an hour of seeing only small bits of plastic floating by, I returned to the helm. A minuet later, Andrew spots something off the port side. A perfectly sized knot of blue and white ropes had floated into our path. Eric turns the boat around; I grab the boat hook and wait till we draw up along side it. Once within range, I spear the hook into the tangle and we begin hoisting it out of the water and onto the deck. It draws the smell of the ocean with it. It’s festooned with new growth and has become a refuge for crabs making it an invasive habitat. To our surprise, enmeshed with in is a yellow and black-stripped reef fish. The nearest reef is back in Hawaii so this guy is far from home. We throw him back into the water to seek out a new sanctuary. Once the ropes have dried out and the crabs vacated, I plan on cleaning them down and then packaging them up to post back to. I’ll try to unpick some of the rope and reweave into a textile. Owing to how time consuming weaving is, and how I currently lack skill, this will be a back burner project for the foreseeable future.
28th of July – Day 6
After the second manta trawl we turned the engine off and put our snorkels on, taking the opportunity of warm water and a quiet ocean to get some swimming in. Once you jump in and the bubbles fade, an endless deep blue surrounds you. Beneath you, that blue just keeps getting darker as the lights momentum is stopped dead by the depth. Dark green organic fibres floated around us, interspersed with the occasional bit of plastic debris. I took my flippers off to climb the ladder back onto the boat when I suddenly felt a sharp stinging pain on my left foot. I looked down to see a small Portuguese man of war has snared its self on my foot. My impulse is to grab it but I quickly check the urge. Instead, I start jerking my foot manically towards the water. After about the third kick I manage to shake the bulk of it but a few tendrils remain obstinate. Eric drops down beside me and scraps what’s left away with a diving knife. The pain doesn’t seem too bad. I decide to get right back in the water and enjoy the wonders of the ocean. The others start diving off the prow so I decide to give that a go as well. It’s while I start swimming back that I start to feel a pain in my thigh. Have I been stung again? I climb out and there’s no sign of another sting but the pain keeps growing. A curious albatross decides to pay the ship a visit and we all spend some time admiring this incredible bird. A beautiful moment but the pain remains. At first I thought I must have pulled a muscle then I started panicking that I was having some sort of allergic reaction to the sting. The pain moves back to the foot and I’m left concluding that the venom was a slow burner and spread its way up my leg. A few hours later and the pains still there but the edge has been taken off by a handy pack of frozen sweet corn.
29th of July – Day 7
Today starts with the 4am-8am watch. We went through our first time zone last night so the clocks went forward an hour. The perk of the 4-8 shift is that you’re up the evening before for sunset and then again in the morning to watch it rise. This morning’s sunrise was magnificent. It began with a burning orange along the eastern horizon, gradating into a soft blue. This held for about twenty minutes before the sun finally broke through a small blockade of cloud. At the same time, a final meteor cut a white line through the blue and disintegrated above. As the sun continued to climb, we began to notice things sparkling on the surface of the water. As the sparkles got closer to our starboard side we realised that it was a fleet of small jellyfish. The surface was swarming with them.
Towards the end of my watch I was left alone on deck, manning the helm. As I drank my tea, lazily adjusting the wheel back to the 035 heading we’d been on for a couple of days, I thought I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Movement. I turned my head back to look and then jumped to my feet. Just shy of the horizon I saw some splashes and black fins breaking the surface. Birds were swooping around from above, preying on the fish that had been scared to the surface. I shouted down to the others below deck but as soon as they were topside the distant drama had dissipated. I turned the ship towards where the commotion had been and Andrew went to the bow, his camera in hand. The birds still circled over-head but the surface remained still. A few moments later a couple of the black fins re-emerged, whales were coming up for air. Unfortunately we were still too far to get a good picture. The whales outpaced us or else returned to the depths. We turned back to our heading of 035, our brief pursuit admitting defeat.
After my last entry I took a brief nap. I woke up thirsty so I went up to the deck to fetch my water bottle. The sight that met me was jaw dropping. We’d reached the heart of the high. The heart of the high is the where air pressure is highest, forcing air away into lower pressured areas. Consequently there was no wind. The surface of the ocean had turned to living glass, undulating ever so slightly. The water was so calm you could see the sky reflected in it. The vast stillness looked like a maritime dessert, dunes of water swaying ever so slightly. The effect was beautiful and serene. The only thing to disrupt this harmony was the debris. With the waves stilled it became much easier to spot plastic and miscellaneous garbage. The most notable piece was a whole tire with bits of sea flora growing from its underside. Fishing buoys became frequent and easy to spot from afar while the ever-present flecks became increasingly persistent.
30th of July – Day 9
I turned up on deck this morning, red eyed and a tad grumpy, to an overcast sky and a cold wind. I was late to my watch as I’d fallen back to sleep after my initial wake up. The 5 hours sleep is really hit and miss. Today was a miss. As I stood at the helm, struggling to keep on course, Shanley decides to unfurl the Yankee sail. At the moment she starts grinding on the winch we spot a burst of water on the port side. And then another. Following the bursts, the dark form of a whale arches out of the water. I abandon my post at the helm to stare. Shanley shouts below deck and the whole crew scrambles up top to greet the visitors. We identify them as Sperm Whales. I recall a documentary talking about how difficult it can be to find Sperm Whales as they’re deep divers. The Whales bob up and down, they’re heads popping out of the water instead of their flukes. I brake out of the moment when I realise I left the ship drifting off course and jump back to the helm, apologising to Shanley. I’m forgiven my minor mutiny.
I had a really good conversation about environmentalism with Chris this afternoon. He raised the point about how the narrative we use to talk about the sustainability issue. He thinks the environmental movement is responsible for peddling a message of fear. It’s use of the words crisis, emergency and apocalypse create sensationalism and fear. He goes on to say that the human brain doesn’t function when it’s in a state of panic or fear. We loose the ability to think rationally and and act with our reptilian brain, on impulse. He says we need to change the story. Move away from being prophets of Armageddon and instead preach hope. He thinks we should put emphasis on the beauty of nature to spark a sense of stewardship.
The Gyre hasn’t been quite what I expected. I knew from my research that the Gyre was never the floating island of trash that most believe it to be but I still expected it to be visually impactful. There seemed to be less debris floating around then I had expected. For the most part it just looks like an endless ocean, occasionally marked by an old buoy or colourful speck. It wasn’t until you begin to take samples using the Manta Trawl that you see how insidious the problem is. The sea is full of Micro and Nano-plastics that you just can’t see until you filter them out. Some are just too small but a lot of it is made invisible by the turbulence of the Ocean, much in the same way that it was so difficult to spot the flag on our training day.
The general consensus on board is that the plastic in the ocean is a huge problem. However, the solution isn’t to try and remove what’s out there but it’s to address the plethora of problems further up the chain. The problems are with policy, systems of production and human behaviour/attitude. We need to plug the tap, clean the sink and unblock the drain.
31st of July – Day 10
Andrew and I arrived for our evening watch on the night of a new moon, meaning no extra light. To make things harder, it was so overcast that not a single star was visible. We were in pitch black, or as Chip put it, “it’s darker than a bag of ass holes out here”. The darkness means you have no point of reference, leaving you to steer by the digital numbers that run a few seconds behind the turn. Not only were we sailing in total darkness, but we were sailing in winds speeds between 25-30mph and waves between 3-5 feet high, all tied together with a hissing rain. Granted, not exactly the worse storm the Pacific has ever seen but when a wave that size hits the side with no warning, the boat gets swept to the side and unceremoniously dropped. Just as I throw the helm round to counteract the movement, another wave ensnared the boat. We decide to change the sailing set up. Furl the Yankee sail and replace it with a staysail. Eric turns up on deck to help and he; Shanley and Andrew get to work, illuminating their way with red and green headlamps. I’m left in my embittered battle with the sea for control of the boat. Waves continue to crash round the sides, blasting spray across the deck. The rain continues to fall and amongst all the chaos, all I can think about is how much I’m enjoying myself. Once we’ve got the Yankee furled, things begin to calm down as the ship sacrifices speed for control. The arrival of the staysail gives us a touch more momentum but with none of the wildness of before. I was at the helm for an hour and a half and I loved it! My battle with the ocean ends in a tie. We’re on course by the end of it but I’m sure a playback would reveal a snake like path behind us.
5th of August – Day 15
The ocean has given us one final day of wonders before we sail into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. While I was below deck, preparing for my next watch, we heard shouts that dolphins had been spotted. We all rushed up to find a group of Pacific white-sided dolphins swimming along side the boat and jumping out of the water. We only got a few moments with them before the dolphins, their curiosity satiated, swam back out to sea. The following surprise came after dark. I looked behind us at our wake, and noticed a few glowing dots. As I stared longer I began noticing larger spots of luminescence. The black water was suddenly alive with a ghostly glow, as if the spirits of the drowned were beating against the surface of the water. This was the luminescence I’d been hoping for! After a while of watching the glowing trails I decide to head below. On Eric’s advice, I tried pumping the toilet with the light turned off. The bowl of the toilet began to glow with small flecks of green light. As I giggled like a child, flushing plankton down a toilet, I heard Eric call my name. I quit playing with the toilet and headed back up on deck. The luminescence had upped its game. The sea was aglow with the eerie green light. You could see luminescent light shimmering in the white caps all around the boat. Apparently I’d missed the best of it (when I was playing with toilet) and the glow had been so bright on the horizon that the others mistook it for land looming ahead. The one sight still left unchecked is the appearance of some humpback whales. We still have one morning left but given that we’ve already seen a blue whale and some sperm whales; I can make my peace with missing them.
August 6th – Day 16
The humpbacks arrived. This morning we’ve been sailing through the Straight of Juan de Fuca. There’s land either side of us but with the daylight came fog. The fog added that extra bit of excitement to the morning’s activities, one of which was ship dodging. There’s far more traffic here then we’ve seen all trip. While I’m at the helm, the fog thins out and Chris spots some movement far out. We all stare and then see an eruption of water and the snaking black hulks of some humpbacks! An hour goes by. I spot some similar movement on our starboard side but this time coming towards us. We see a group of four humpbacks brake the surface of the water as the swim along. Suddenly we see their famous hump movement up out of the water before they plunge themselves down, tail rising into the air. They make their dives with ballet like choreography. First one goes, and then as his tail is submerged the second takes his turn, then the third and finally the fourth. Shanley comes up to see what all the shouting is about just as the last tail disappears. We try not to be too boastful about the sights we had just seen when Shanley points behind us. The whales had returned for a grand finale. I turned just in time to see a whale almost completely airborne, no more than 50m away. The other whales began jumping out of the water as well, their heads rising straight up before flopping down. One started waving its flipper back and forth, splashing the water. Once the show was over, they all humped their backs a final time and returned to the deep. It was one of the most spectacular scenes I’ve ever witnessed.
