street roots
Aug. 3, 2012
Albatross carcasses reveal a deadly diet o f our lighters,
bottle caps and sundry other plastics we discard
BY ROSETTE ROYALE
S T R E E T N E W S S E R V IC E
hris Jordan’s odyssey from Seattle to
a small island in the North Pacific
Ocean teeming with dead and dying
seabirds was fueled by an unlikely siren:
plastic.
Since 2003, Jordan has amassed a body of
photographs that have investigated the
United States’ growing addiction to mass
consumption. A river of discarded cell
phones, a sea of colored glass bottles, an
army of Barbie dolls: all these and more, in
large-format documentary photos or digital
recreations, have pointed to Americans’
propensity to buy goods that end up as
mountains of garbage.
But Jordan, 48, said that even though his
work has been well received, he’s always
been challenged by the enormity of helping
people understand the role we play in
creating — and ending — our cycle of trash.
He knew that plastic as a potent symbol of
society’s excess. A group of scientists he
met agreed.
When the topic of the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch came up, that mythic gyre of
marine trash that swirls over an
indeterminate area of the Pacific, Jordan
lamented there was no way to photograph
the entire maelstrom. A scientist spoke up:
“She said, ‘If you want to see the garbage
patch up close, go look inside the stomachs
of dead baby birds on Midway Island,’”
Jordan recalled.
Surprised by the woman’s words, Jordan
went to the Internet. A search turned up
images of dead birds on Midway that
showed their guts littered with undigested
plastic. Surely, he thought, those images
were altered. He could only think of one
way to verify the pictures: visit Midway.
C
Past and present
The trip would, in one sense, be a
journey back in history. In June 1942, six
months after the Japanese Imperial Navy
attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy
defeated the Japanese fleet during the
Battle of Midway. Numerous military
historians consider the U.S. action on the
island atoll a decisive moment in
determining the outcome of WWII.
By the time Jordan flew to Midway in the
fall of 2009, the 2.4-sqaure-mile island still
held the former naval air station, along with
a hotel — and millions’ of seabirds. The
majority of them were various species of
albatross, a large seabird, some with
wingspans that reach 12 feet.
As he walked around the island, Jordan
discovered the images he’d seen on the Web
hadn’t been altered. Midway was an above
ground mausoleum of birds. Scattered
among their wind-ravaged feathers and
decaying bones, lay bright, colored pieces of
plastic: cigarette lighters, bottle caps,
washers, even a plastic teddy bear.
Jordan photographed what he saw, vowing
not to add or remove any plastic from the
carcasses. Sometimes, he would remove the
bird’s breastplate, to better reveal the
plastic waste it had consumed, but
otherwise he left the carcass alone. Gazing
at a once living creature brought down by
the detritus of modern human life was a
mirror.
“It’s like looking into our souls,” Jordan
said.
The photos became part of the collection
“Midway: Message from the Gyre.” He
posted the images on the Internet and they
went viral. In response, he received
thousands of e-mails, many asking a
variation of a question: After seeing such
loss of life caused by human waste, how do
we find a sense of hope?
The questions were heartbreaking, but
Jordan didn’t want his work to paralyze
viewers, but rather spur them to action. So
he decided to return to Midway, to tell more
stories from the island.
Crossroads
Jordan has now visited Midway six times.
Aided by a crew, he’s filmed and
photographed the perils of avian life on the
island. This imagery will be part of the film
“Midway,” the trailer of which can be
viewed at midwayfilm.com. He’s started an
online campaign to raise $100,000 to
finance the work.
Even with the film in its early stage,
Jordan and his crew have captured moving
images. One video shows a mother albatross
that fed her chick a meal that contained
fishing line. The line runs like a deadly
tether from the mother’s beak to the
chick’s. Jordan and an assistant remove the
line from the mother, but they found that
the line was wrapped around the chick’s
tongue. Eventually, they cut the line in
hopes the chick will survive. They later
learn the line could be dental floss.
See P LA ST IC , page 9
Above top, the
decomposed body o f
an albatross
showing the
contents o f its
stomach, including
a discarded lighter
and bottlecaps. “I t ’s
like looking into
our souls, ” says
photographer Chris
Jordan. Above, an
albatross and a
baby huddle on the
remote Midway
Atoll.
P H O T O S B Y CHRIS
JO R D A N