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10/19/2009 08:17:12 AM · #1 |
From the site:
These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.
Click to see photos, some people may find them disturbing.
//www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 08:17:30. |
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10/19/2009 08:36:20 AM · #2 |
OMG thats awful. I find them disturbing but because of what these poor birds are suffering and what it shows is a very graphic effect we are having on the world.
Thankyou for sharing. |
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10/19/2009 08:42:49 AM · #3 |
Plastic thrown into the ocean don't just go away, it goes somewhere. I was disturbed by the amount of plastic junk that washes up on the beaches of the "pristine" Bahama islands when we were cruising that area on my son's sail boat. On the uninhabited island beaches the stuff that comes ashore stays there. It's sad, but it is all manmade stuff, so maybe raising awareness of the problem through photography will have at least a small effect in the future.
We have a similar problem in this area of the world with sea turtles eating clear plastic because they think that it is jellyfish.
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10/19/2009 10:31:25 AM · #4 |
That's terrible. :-(
I guess that's just the stuff that floats, so just the tip of the iceberg, so to say.
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10/19/2009 11:16:09 AM · #5 |
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10/19/2009 11:36:27 AM · #6 |
Why dont they eat fish like normal seabirds? I am not surprised they are dying if they are eating plastic..
I blame the parents.
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 11:37:19. |
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10/19/2009 11:40:16 AM · #7 |
they wouldn't be eating it if you didn't throw plastic into the ocean... there's a lot more to it than plastic - as far as ocean pollution is concerned.
look up mercury lvls of tuna in japan...
people eat those fish.
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 11:42:23.
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10/19/2009 11:44:43 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by soup:
they wouldn't be eating it if you didn't throw plastic into the ocean... |
Why do I always get blamed for everything. |
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10/19/2009 11:48:00 AM · #9 |
kinda looks hookey to me, they are all very neatly and artistically arranged , especially the third from the end, the plastic sutff is actually bigger than the whole bird put together. in my eyes anyways
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 11:49:12. |
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10/19/2009 11:51:25 AM · #10 |
Originally posted by JulietNN:
kinda looks hookey to me, they are all very neatly and artistically arranged , in my eyes anyways |
HI J, all joking aside for a few moments - I would expect them to look a bit like that as you have to remember they move down the digestive tract - which once decomposed would leave the plastic neatly arranged. I fully believe these were found like this and it would be quite easy to go to Midway and find these bird corpses oneself.
As much as it is awful, I do find it incredibly fascinating. |
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10/19/2009 11:52:08 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by linkabove:
According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food. |
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10/19/2009 11:53:10 AM · #12 |
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10/19/2009 11:54:50 AM · #13 |
it's not the parents fault, and IMO not a laughing matter. i only wrote it that way to rile you up a bit...
Originally posted by Simms:
Why do I always get blamed for everything. |
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10/19/2009 12:01:27 PM · #14 |
I have spent a LOT of time sailing in many places of the world, and I have firsthand experience of what a garbage dump the oceans have become, but these images are amongst the most disturbing I have ever seen. Really drives the point home.
R. |
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10/19/2009 12:05:02 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
I have spent a LOT of time sailing in many places of the world, and I have firsthand experience of what a garbage dump the oceans have become, but these images are amongst the most disturbing I have ever seen. Really drives the point home.
R. |
Most of the garbage is the 'doldrums', avoided by sailors. Do some looking around and you'll find a map showing the East and West Pacific areas of trash. It's huge!
ETA.... Rubbish map.
I don't see why there wouldn't be similar areas in the southern hemisphere and in other oceans. :-(
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 12:07:31.
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10/19/2009 12:18:16 PM · #16 |
Originally posted by Strikeslip:
Most of the garbage is the 'doldrums', avoided by sailors. Do some looking around and you'll find a map showing the East and West Pacific areas of trash. It's huge! |
Yup, I'm well aware of this phenomenon. Appalling.
R. |
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10/19/2009 01:18:41 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
...Appalling. |
Very.
It's ironic to me how we went through the shopping bag change from paper to plastic and may have screwed things up even worse by doing that. Now we're trying to phase out these plastic bags and instead use reusable cotton bags. It makes me wonder how we might be screwing up by doing that.
Judging by the little reading I've done on it due to this thread, the physical plastic is only part of the problem, as it creates and attracts chemicals that kill and mutate. These work their way up the food chain to us filthy humans. What goes around comes around.
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10/19/2009 01:22:43 PM · #18 |
can a Phenomenon be human generated ?
or is it just the way the currents collect the garbage for us you're referring to as a phenomenon ?
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Yup, I'm well aware of this phenomenon. Appalling. |
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10/19/2009 01:26:19 PM · #19 |
and keeps going around and around and around. an endless circle of cost vs convenience.
Originally posted by Strikeslip:
What goes around comes around. |
maybe i should say cycle. but the unnatural aspect of it causes me not to.
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 13:27:42.
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10/19/2009 01:32:17 PM · #20 |
Originally posted by Simms:
Originally posted by JulietNN:
kinda looks hookey to me, they are all very neatly and artistically arranged , in my eyes anyways |
HI J, all joking aside for a few moments - I would expect them to look a bit like that as you have to remember they move down the digestive tract - which once decomposed would leave the plastic neatly arranged. I fully believe these were found like this and it would be quite easy to go to Midway and find these bird corpses oneself.
As much as it is awful, I do find it incredibly fascinating. |
Having come across several dead animal remains in the wild, rarely are they neatly in one place. Other animals eat them, drag parts away, rip them apart. Wind moves stuff around as well. Are there no scavengers or heavy winds there?
I don't doubt that it happens, but these photos look a little too perfect. |
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10/19/2009 02:10:11 PM · #21 |
Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Ugh. Those caps the birds eat had bottles at one time. I suppose they're at the bottom of the ocean now. :-(
This is all quite depressing.
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 14:10:46.
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10/19/2009 02:11:11 PM · #22 |
Originally posted by soup:
can a Phenomenon be human generated ?
or is it just the way the currents collect the garbage for us you're referring to as a phenomenon ? |
Yes to both.
1. Humans are a part of the natural world, and thus events precipitated by us can properly be labeled "phenomena", and
2. These "garbage pits of the sea" exist in vast acreages of ocean where the currents cancel each other out and nothing escapes easily. It's like you were flushing your toilet into a large, open pond in your back forty: the shit has nowhere to go. That's what happens to a lot of surface-bound debris in the ocean, if it doesn't get washed ashore somewhere along the way it ends of cycling around in these vast eddies.
Meanwhile, anywhere you have stuff on the surface you have plankton, krill and such gathering in the 'shade", and this attracts small bait fish, and THAT attracts other marine life, including birds. The Albatrosses, unfortunately, are very dumb birds, and they can't differentiate very well between plastic and bait.
R. |
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10/19/2009 02:14:12 PM · #23 |
Originally posted by LoudDog:
Having come across several dead animal remains in the wild, rarely are they neatly in one place. Other animals eat them, drag parts away, rip them apart. Wind moves stuff around as well. Are there no scavengers or heavy winds there?
I don't doubt that it happens, but these photos look a little too perfect. |
There are very few predators/scavengers on these very small atolls; the ecosystem can't support them. That's WHY the birds nest there in such proliferation.
R. |
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10/19/2009 02:31:57 PM · #24 |
i say no to #1
yes we live in a natural world. but by making it unatural in any way negates a phenomenon IMO.
#2 is an unfortunate issue with a natural phenomenon - however humans didn't create it. we just throw our trash there.
Message edited by author 2009-10-19 14:32:25.
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10/19/2009 04:01:50 PM · #25 |
Originally posted by soup:
i say no to #1
yes we live in a natural world. but by making it unatural in any way negates a phenomenon IMO.
#2 is an unfortunate issue with a natural phenomenon - however humans didn't create it. we just throw our trash there. |
The phenomenon is the gyre, the vortex, the doldrum. Right. I am not saying that's a human phenomenon. It's a natural phenomenon.
But in 1, I am just remarking that there ARE human phenomena out there.
R. |
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