March 24 - Bon Voyage Valdivia

Hello to all of the people who may have been waiting patiently to read my account of our research expedition with 5 Gyres, and hello to anyone who may be finding The Daily Ocean for the first time. 

I will be rolling out my acocunt of our trip that started in Valdivia, Chile and ended in Papeete, Tahiti about two weeks ago. We have been home since last Saturday.

Due to my sea sickness on the boat, the limited internet access I came across time and again on our journey, and my desire to fully experience the landscape of our adventure, I decided to recount our tale for you in retrospect. I hope you look forward to following along. I know I am excited to tell the tale. Enjoy and please comment away if you have questions or the like. 

Tally-ho! 

Sara 

This is the boat docked behind us. Bano is the word in spanish for bathroom and cocina the word for kitchen. I had no idea now much I would miss a stable room for each as we boarded the Sea Dragon on a beautiful sunny morning in late March. 

Not to mention the fact that we had to climb aboard with a monster! The Bag Monster to be specific! Please go to Chico Bag's Facebook Page and show your support. They are being sued by the plastics industry and your show of support would mean a lot to them right now. More on this topic in a post all its own.

Another member of our intrepid crew was Ben Lear. He wrote a folk opera about "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch." You can catch a live show near you soon if you live in the LA or NYC area. I encourage you to check him out. He is a soulful performer with a voice like Ben Gibbard and Neil Young.

You may recognize this guy. He is my husband Garen Baghdasarian who committed the last 16 months to fundraising, grant writing, time-off-taking, and research brainstorming to join our voyage. I am forever grateful that we shared this experience together. 

Paula is from Argentinia and writes for Treehugger. She is beautiful, grounded, smart as hell, and one cool person. What fun to have her aboard!

I'll take you on a quick tour. 

As you carefully walk backwards down the stairs of the boat to go underneath....

you pass the "nav station" or navigational area which looked like the cockpit of a space shuttle to me for longer than I would like to admit. 

Here we have the galley where most sailors with their sea legs got to read, type on a computer, and generally hang out if not on watch.

This is the lab that Garen worked in after taking the readings and water samples he needed from the ocean. It also doubled as a food overflow storage area. Hey, with such limited space you have to get creative. 

Our bunk. But imagine it on an angle of about 45% to be more accurately represented. 

Garen, and my vote for "most valuable crew member" Charlie from Scotland as they put together Garen's CTD (measures data like salinity, temp. and ph) in the forpeat before it got buried in sails and such. 

2 bathrooms. 14 people. Constant movement. You do the imagining. 

I had no idea that I was not going to set foot for at least three days behind the stearing wheel of our 47 ton, steel hulled home due to sea sickness when we left port on that sunny day. And I had no idea that I would go from scared out of my mind to steer, to at times shockingly slack about the post of driver. One illustration of my hard earned level of comfort to come was that you could routinely find us stearing with our feet at dinner time if you were the shift on deck. 


More to come....and very soon!

Last Day On Dry Land & Directions To Follow Our Journey

We came home after lunch at the Cafe La Ultima Frontera to the task of packing.

The newest 5 Gyres crew that has formed in Valdivia, Chile is ready to move onto the Sea Dragon tomorrow at 0900.

First, look that the picture above and below and then tell me how surprised you are that we made it past LAX airport security. On second thought, perhaps this is not a surprise at all. The "chemicals" that you see above are non-toxic. They are along for the ride to test the seawater for ph, salinity and such. However, the flo-through flourametor (Garen's not here to check the spelling of said piece of equipment) looks like we could be caring all of the parts to re-assemble an oozy....and then set up a drug lab with the glass beaker. We are about to do neither but I thought it may be interesting to see what the equipment looks like that we've dragged along from Santa Monica.

Does a place prepare you to leave, or do your prepare to leave a place?

The answer for me today is both. The dogs we met and were sure lived at Parque Saval had moved on when we went back today. The cafe that we wanted to go to last night was closed. The comfy room at Totem Hostel had creaky-creepy ghost noises last night. Time to be moving on.

Here is how you can follow along on the journey:

I will be guest blogging for 5 Gyres from time to time. 
I will try to update The Daily Ocean when I can. 
The Sea Dragon has her own blog and a real time map to chart our progress along with us!


Until the next time I can log on, I'll leave you with a verse from a song I listened to hundreds of times as a teenager. You'll "understand why" when you read on:


"WHEN YOU SEE THE SOUTHERN CROSS FOR THE FIRST TIME. YOU'LL UNDERSTAND NOW WHY YOU CAME THIS WAY. FOR THE TRUTH YOU MIGHT BE SEARCHING FOR IS SO SMALL. BUT IT'S AS BIG AS THE PROMISE, THE PROMISE OF THE COMING DAY"
- CROSBY, STILLS AND NASH

WORLD WATER DAY

a tide pool in Niebla, Chile

IN HONOR OF WORLD WATER DAY: 

2 VERSES FROM OCEAN BY LED ZEPPLIN

Singing in the sunshine, laughing in the rain.

Hitting on the moonshine, rocking in the brain.

Got no time to pack my bag, my foots outside the door.

Got a date, can't be late for the high hopes hailla ball.

Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean's roar.

Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more.

Singing about the good things and the sun that lights the day.

I used to sing on the mountains, has the ocean lost its way. 

World Water Day 2011 - Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge

"This is the first time in human history that most of the world's population live in cities: 3.3 billion people ...and the urban landscape continues to grow."

Our upcoming expedition with 5 Gyres through the South Pacific to Easter Island will give me the antithesis experience to the urban landscape sprawl, and the struggle to connect the citizens who live there with fresh water as is the theme of this years' UN World Water Day. 

My direct interaction with water is bound to be salty, vast, and highly variable depending on the whimsy of the weather patterns scrolling across the ocean at any given time during the two and a half week sail ahead of us.

In fact, Garen and I stood on the beach in Niebla the other day, looking out at the bright blue horizon and estimated that our view from the sand was the same one we would see as we left the safety of our Chilean port behind to sail away on the Sea Dragon. 

Although we will be far from land, our work is to bring our research back to the terrestrial citizens of the world so that solutions can be found to reduce the plastic pollution infiltrating not only our oceans, but our streams, our lakes, and our bodies as well.

Day 8 - March 18, Valdivia, Chile

Niebla, Chile - 20 min. ride from Valdivia

We have been staying in a small city that is a bit up river from the coast. This is the first beach in Chile that Garen and I have seen. As soon as I saw the water, I felt how much I had missed seeing the ocean for the last week. 

A word about the street dogs that we have met in Niebla and Valdivia.

These dogs are skinny. 

Sometimes so skinny that you want to look away. 

These dogs have a healthy fear of people but have not shown any sign of aggression toward us. 

These dogs have manners when you give them leftovers, and treats. 

Some of these dogs will not eat a "dog" biscuit. 

We think it may be because they have never had one. 

These dogs need help. 

I would love to connect with a local vet that could perform spaying and neuturing for a small fee, or for free. I'm working on it. The means don't exist for people to take all of these dogs in. I respect that. But if there are less of them, there will be less competition for food scrounging. This will alleviate the suffering of some of the smartest, kindest dogs I have ever met.

We walked down the beach after meeting the dogs and quickly came upon many items made from "disposable" plastic. I read an email today when we got back to the hostel from a man working on sea turtles in central america. He wrote that the most common item found on the beaches where he's been working is the plastic bottle. 

A cormorant drying its wings. 

An oyster catcher flying to a new rock.

Garen and I spent 20 minutes watching the birds, waves and kelp swaying under the water. 

The tide was coming up. We decided to climb down from the rocks and do a beach cleanup. 

Look what we found on our way back.

Our collection from 20 minutes of cleaning the beach. I am glad that I had a Chico Bag in my backpack. The founder, Andy Keller is facing a lawsuit from two out of state (Chico Bags base of operations is in Chico, CA) plastics companies. I will be covering this in some detail as it unfolds. This is a real David vs. Goliath fight. They are trying to shut Andy up, put him out of business, and scare the social movement that has sprung up around banning plastic bags. 

Guess what? 

We are unstoppable. Andy has got a hell of a lot of people behind him. I'll let you know how you can help as more information becomes available. 

Later in the day, we took a ferry to the island of Corral. Garen pointed out the kelp over the side of the pier as we walked to town. Corral is a unique place that has a long embattled history with its Spanish conquerors. Now the island finds itself embattled with disposable plastics, just like everywhere else.

The Sea Dragon docked in Valdivia today. I'm glad Garen and I got out of town to explore because we may be busy for the next few days!

Day 5 - March 15, Valdivia, Chile

This is the Valdivia Botanical Gardens attached to the Universidad Austral de Chile campus. There was very little trash to be found as we wandered through the grounds, inhaling the clean air that is a rarity for us in the Los Angeles area. 

While we are enjoying our time away, we are reminded of the enormous disaster developing in Japan because of the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear power plant experiencing severe damage. HERE ARE "7 SIMPLE WAYS TO HELP" from MASHABLE.

My friend Mark Armen is in the Green Awards. He invented a cigarette butt depository that attracts butt liter to combat the, "OVER ONE BILLION CIGARETTE BUTTS SMOKED IN THE U.S. EACH DAY." Watch his video and please, PLEASE, vote for him. The 25K grand prize would go a long way to helping him solve the often over looked, "top item fouling communities and polluting water across the globe."

Here is a massive dose of HOPE. The students of Coyle Middle School in Texas have come up with 18 custom websites and/or facebook pages illustrating creative solutions to Plastic Pollution. I am just blown away right now. If every school had a teacher like Jim Manley, or Ben Kay of SAMOHI to inspire their students, we would be in pretty good shape!  

Congratulations, and thanks for the inspiration to all the students who put in the long hours to create the websited and fb pages. I can't wait to read each and every one. If you would like to find the entire list, go to Bonnie Monteleone's blog, "The Plastic Ocean Project." Bonnie, you are so inspiring as well! Thank you.

As you may know, the state of Oregon has a bill to ban single use plastic bags written by State Sen. Mark Hass. Hass turned away an offer from Hilex Poly Co. to build a "recycling plant" for plastic bags in his state in return for killing the bill...and a few other requirements. In a letter to the company's CEO Hass said, "Oregon is not for sale." Phew! Read all the details on OREGON LIVE.

There are times when writing The Daily Ocean astounds me. One of those moments was when I logged onto facebook the other day (which I rarely do..) and found a message from the writer of "THE PISCES DREAM SEEKER," Tara. She has been collecting trash from the beach, weighing it, and blogging about such crucial topics as shark finning and the outstanding activists behind the 5 Gyres Institute who we are about to join. Thank you Tara for the inspiration. I highly recommend adding her blog to your list of must read online reading!

In 2006 a film was released called, "A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash." The fantastic blog, STAND FOR LESS asks us to increase our ENERGY I.Q. by highlighting this film as a must see. The floating bag in the photograph above is made from oil. In a world that is run on a scarce resource like petroleum, should we be making bags as easily discarded as this one out of the dwindling supply? The answer is obvious. 

I'm sitting in Moro Cafe writing this post with shaking fingers from too much strong espresso, catching up on back logged articles I've stashed in my email inbox. The problem with this is that I find myself with too much subject matter. But one article that comes to my mind of special importance is the press release from PepsiCo. about their 100% "plant based bottle. 

Manuel Maqueda weighed in on today's article found in the LA Times saying, "This is greenwashing. Period."

He explains:

-these bottles are PET, "as toxic, as wasteful, and as polluting as ever."

- "bioplastics" are also synthetic polymers; it's just that plants are being used instead of oil to obtain the carbon and hydrogen needed for polymerization."

- he warns that manufacturing these types of plastics may be DIRTIER than using petroleum!

For more information he gave two links:

1. Earth Island - the "bioplastic labyrinth"

2. Environmental Leader.com - producing these types of plastics is dirtier than using oil

Algalita Marine Research Foundation has come out with a study on how smaller fish (Lantern Fish) in the pacific are ingesting plastic because it mimics the size and texture of plankton as it breaks down. Lantern fish are deep sea dwellers that are the common food for Tuna and Mahi-Mahi. Their study will be presented at the NOAA Marine Debris Conference later this month in Hawaii.

How many fish, or plastic for that matter, do you think this Cormorant has eaten living in the Calle Calle river running along the city of Valdivia?

Day 3 - March 13, Valdivia, Chile

This is the view from the bridge looking over the section of the river that we have been exploring for the last couple of days. The sea lions (those brown lumps on the dock) can be seen basking in the sun. People stroll along on a sunny Sunday taking in the view and enjoying life. The pace is considerably slower than LA. I like it.  

This is the view from the bridge when I look down into river Calle Calle. The ubiquitous plastic bag.

I'm not sure if you will see the sea gull between the boats at first glance. If you look again, you'll find the white bird. 

And then I saw another plastic bag, drifting under the surface in a ghostly water world. 

If you look closer, you will find two fish navigating the river next to some clear plastic.

I wonder if the cormorant that dove under the surface right as I snapped this picture ever went diving for fish and came up with a peak of plastic instead?

We finally crossed over to the University side of the river on Isla Teja where we could look back at the riverfront of Valdivia.

There was a pathway leading along the river, past three museums that we left for another day and up into the campus.

We like Valdivia. It has a young, energetic vibe. There are not many tourists here that are from outside of   South America even though it is late summer. We don't exactly blend. The people that we've met have been helpful, and laid back. One man followed us out of the bank the other day with our ATM card that we had left behind. That's what you get for having five hours of sleep, and two cat naps on the plane in 50 hours. We were very impressed that he didn't pocket our card. Phew....

As we made our way up the stairs into the park above the river, we decided to start a 20 minute cleanup.

This red bottle cap was one of our first finds.

Oh joy! A biodegradable plastic bag. Warms my heart that this nifty idea has penetrated into the southern hemisphere.

One of the great bonuses of being on the other side of the world is that it is summertime here. Summertime means berries. 

Garen roams around the park. He didn't have to look too hard to find plenty to pick up. I have to say though, that we have seen a pretty tidy town so far. Perhaps it is because along the stretch of the river that we have been staying off of, we have noticed that they employ city workers to cleanup after the pedestrians. Maybe this part of the park is where college students hang out drinking beer and smoking butts and that's why we found so much trash?  There were plenty of left overs from these two activities. 

Our twenty minutes produced two full bags of trash. We found the plastic bags during our cleanup to fill. It was fortunate that we found one bag when we started, and one as we needed a second one. Fortunate, or unnerving that we found 2 plastic bags in about 10 minutes. 

This is a mural that covered the side of a wall along the main street through the University. You can guess that I was really drawn to it. We've noticed at least a dozen people sitting in the city along the river, or in the main square sketching. There are lots of murals in Valdivia as well. Evidence of art is everywhere.

Garen and I walked through the campus some more before we decided to go get some pizza at one of the  few restaurants that have been open this Sunday. The whole city slowed down today, letting us ease further into our trip. We're in the conserving-our-energy mode because we know that once we join 

5 Gyres and the boat, it's on!