Plastic is forever

Very good work, thought provoking.

WOW! very impactful

Certainly emotionally difficult photographs for the photographer to take, but also very poignant. They are the most effective photographs I've seen in communicating the problems with plastic trash left to float in the Pacific Ocean.

Very thought provoking :-(

Incredible work. Almost art, if it weren't so disturbing and sad.

When do we finally knowledge this as a huge problem for all of us, a problem that we have to solve together. Plastic dumpland in the middle of the pacific (and ones in the atlantic and indian ocean) are a result of typical human behaviour - out of sight = out of mind.

More pictures like this please - maybe this will open more eyes and we start to think what are we consuming / useing and where a big part of it finally ends up.

What an appalling creature Man is...

Terrible.

The Pacific Garbage Vortex needs to be addressed by the government, and soon.

Very powerful and disturbing images...

Thanks for the post ...

Even though I knew about this its still very upsetting to see ...

Dive safe

DeanB

Hauntingly beautiful work.

But so so sad to see.

Thank you for posting!

- Mary Lynn

I have seen plastic in the sea but I never appreciated the scale of the problem.

Like the videos show; everything is feeding on these, and the toxins are leaching into the animals.

Good pics and videos.

Lee

Haunting!

This is terrible to see!!

Why are we so careless

Thanks for sharing

http://tinyurl.com/yzg49qu

The authors state something like 10s of thousands of chicks die from the plastic.

In the only published data that I could find it says

"Thus it appears that plastics may add considerable stress to individuals, but probably have little or no direct impact at the population level. Satiation and reduced resistance to the effects of lead poisoning and avian pox virus may eventually contribute to death in birds with heavy plastic loads."

While this is still a shame and quite depressing, there appears to be little evidence that the plastic is doing the killing and less evidence that the plastic is coming from the gyre and not from sick (avian pox) birds picking it up off the ground.

Bill

The parting image was particularly haunting

It's not only the birds...

Very sad!

Shocking. One can only imagine how many birds and other animals die from this kind of human activity.

Stew