Odd Meal

11/12/2009

Warning, this is sad.  I share it because it's up to us to stop this from happening.  Below is a video of what happens when albatross parents misidentify our plastic trash floating in the ocean and feed it to their chicks.  What you decide to purchase (or not to purchase), what you reuse, what you recycle and how you throw your trash away all have impacts on animals thousands of miles away.  Do you know where your trash goes?

From photographer Chris Jordan:

"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."