On June 1st, 2008, and with relatively little fanfare, two intrepid men, Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal, set sail from Long Beach on a voyage from California to Hawaii. On its face, this would not be anything unusual. But this trip was decidedly different, beginning with the materials used to make their boat. Utilizing the fuselage of a Cessna airplane as their cabin, salvaged masting materials, lashing, nets, and 15,000 plastic bottles donated by local high schools and a recycling center, the two sailors and some volunteers designed and fabricated within 3 months, a minimalized 30’ pontooned craft they christened “Junk Raft”.. Like Moses used his wooden staff, Junk Raft would be the rod by which they would communicate their righteous purpose to the world.
“Our message is that the rapid accumulation of plastic trash in the world's oceans cannot be removed with any modern technology. The answer is to stop adding more by ending the age of disposable plastic. It is immensely irresponsible that we design a synthetic material to last forever, and then we make products from it that are designed to be thrown away,” said Eriksen, a Gulf War Vet and holder of a PhD in Science Education from USC.
The mighty Junk Raft confronts the Pacific and calls out the world’s citizens and governments to be more responsible with their plastic waste. Photo: Courtesy of www.junkraft.comThe vision for Junk Raft occurred to Eriksen five years earlier, when he took an exploratory trip down the mighty Mississippi. “I built a similar raft in 2003 called 'Bottle Rocket' and sailed it down the Mississippi River for 2000 miles. I saw an endless trail of plastic leaving our greatest river. I then joined Algalita and vowed to someday build a Kon Tiki-style raft and cross the ocean,” he said. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation is a California based non-profit pro-environmental organization that is dedicated to the protection of the marine environment and its watersheds through research, education, and restoration.
Paschal and Eriksen readied themselves for a delicious sashimi meal when they discovered this pelagic Rainbow Runner’s belly filled with carcinogen leaking plastics. Photo: Marcus EriksenMy November article described the existence of the mythic “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, a mid-ocean vortex within the immense North Pacific Gyre where marine debris accumulated in a relatively dense mass. Eriksen has made several Pacific Ocean crossings, and though he remains unconvinced of its existence, he fully acknowledges the troubling proliferation of junk in the sea. “The North Pacific Gyre IS the Garbage Patch. There is no island of trash to visit. I've crossed the area three times now. The NPG is twice the size of the US, beginning 500 miles off the coast of California and extending to 200 miles off Japan. Hawaii is in the middle of it. It's a thin plastic soup across the sea. Imagine a handful of confetti spread across a football field. Now imagine nine million football fields in the NPG alone,” he said. Garbage Patch or not, he bottom line is that there’s too much rubbish in the ocean and Eriksen and Paschal wanted to get the word out, doing so with heavy domestic and international media coverage and interviews. CNN, CBS, Hindu.com, the AP newswire, and dozens of local radio and newspapers covered the Junk Raft story, and they appeared in person on the Bonnie Hunt and Martha Stewart shows (see the YouTube link below).
With intense resolve, the grizzled voyagers press on towards Hawaii as they meet the challenges of open ocean weather and waves, contaminated catches, and leaking bottles. Photo: www.junkraft.comI must volunteer that it would be a major challenge for me and the family to give up single-use plastics. My kids eat and drink out of plastic containers daily, the wife absolutely could not live without her Tupperware and bottled water, and I use Ziploc bags and saran wrap to store leftovers each nightly. Personally, I think that plastic is one of man’s greater inventions. It’s all the irresponsible and uncaring consumers and corporations that spoil it for everyone. Kind of like that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument. Our society is so deeply immersed in a plastic culture that it may be too late to wean everyone off of it. Like Eriksen, I think control at the manufacturer’s level is the saving grace and this would provide the most immediate relief for the environment. And where it may matter most, at home, I’m trying to ingrain in my kids, the need for responsible use, disposal, and recycling of their trash.
Sunburned and exhausted, but confident their noble message had rang loud and clear across the planet, Eriksen, Paschal, and their beloved Junk Raft near Honolulu on August 28th. Photo: Morgan KavanaughI asked Marcus, “So how do newly interested citizens help further the anti-plastic cause?” His response was swift and well defined, “Bring your own reusables is number one. Number two, support legislation to end the age of disposable plastic.” And so this movement starts with the first small step in a long journey to heal an ailing ocean environment. In a smaller population like Hawaii’s, who’re environmentally educated and deeply rooted in an ocean culture, these two mandates would be easier to initiate amongst the community than in 90% of other places around the globe. But even here, it would take persistent peer pressure and a few stiff new laws to help the movement gain any real traction. Could you imagine the energy it would take to gain an ideological foothold in places like China and India? Hercules might cringe at that one!
In recognition of this reality, Eriksen and Paschal have future awareness campaigns planned to further proliferate their message. Their next venture, called “Junk Ride”, has them bicycling from Vancouver BC, through the US west coast, and down into Tijuana, Mexico. On their way, they will be handing out samples of plastic filled water they actually collected from the ocean, to schools, organizations, and politicians to educate them on the problem.
Junk Raft: http://junkraft.com/home.html
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbXkW_kKAeg
Algalita: http://www.algalita.org/
