Trip to the Hassel Island
The day was perfect, we dropped our dingy in to the water and headed out to a secluded beach on the south side of Hassel Island. I was really looking forward to it because I have never visited this place before and I wanted to see what kind of pollution we are going to encounter there. Of course, I was hoping for a clean beach so we can relax and enjoy the beauty of it all, but we did find the trash, of course pla...

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First windrow - Plastic, was everywhere!
The winds picked up yesterday in the afternoon and lasted throughout the night so we were not able to trawl. We drifted too far off the course and it took hours to get back where we left off. Today we came across our first windrow – basically a patch of trash combined with Sargassum (sea grass found all over the surface of the Sargasso Sea). Trash, mainly plastic, was everywhere! We picked up a few items and then ...

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Bermuda beach cleanup
Today we participated in two beach cleanups organized by Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB) with the help of volunteers from Marsh, IAS and Guy Carpenter. These beaches must be some of the most beautiful in the world, and at first look everything appears OK. Unfortunately, that statement is very far from the truth. I really did not expect to see this level of plastic pollution all the way out here in the middle of...

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Bermuda's beautiful bays versus plastic - Part 2
Islands of Bermuda are located right on the edge of The North Atlantic Gyre which obviously is a major contributing factor to the amount of trash found on its beaches. What is interesting is that many Bermudians are not aware of this problem at all. Most people will tell you that the reason their beaches are so clean is because they have many organizations on the island that do beach clean ups. It is true, many...

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Styrofoam glazed Mile Rock Beach in San Francisco
Today my friend and I went for a walk down to Mile Rock Beach at Land’s End in San Francisco and discovered that Styrofoam is pretty much part of the landscape now. Wherever I looked I saw Styrofoam tiny pieces stuck in between and under the rocks, in the sand and under various bushes and branches that are found on the beach. I have visually examined couple of areas and found that there were at list 2-3 visible p...

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Second windrow - even more plastic
Today at around 15:00 hours, just an hour after we went for a swim, we came across another windrow and this one was even worst then the first one. Plastic was everywhere and in everything. We could only pick up few larger pieces and take photos and videos but it was really sad looking at all that mess we have created. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough photos of all that at this moment cause I was operating the ca...

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Plastic in a belly of a jelly fish
So far, we found plastic in every trawl, however it appears that the situation is not as bad as it is in North Pacific. Of course, this is too early to argue since we are still far away from the center of the gyre, which is some 730 miles North East from Saint Thomas and some 230 miles east of Bermuda. Just minutes after writing the above paragraph we caught something very interesting in our trawl. A jelly fish wi...

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Nonsuch Island
Our friends from BIOS invited us on board of Spirit of Bermuda, a purpose-built sail training vessel based on civilian Bermudian-type schooners built in Bermuda by blacks and whites between 1810 and 1840. In 2009 Spirit participated in TALL SHIPS®ATLANTIC CHALLENGE. It was pretty impressive standing on its deck, it felt like going back in time. Today on board were also group of kids from a local public school to w...

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2 Bermuda to Azores

Sea Dragon on its way to Horta, Azores

Jan 28th

Posted by Ivan Martinetti in 2 Bermuda to Azores

Well, the day has come when we have to say goodbye to Bermuda and hello to the 2nd leg of the 5 Gyres Expedition! This part of the expedition from Bermuda to The Azores is going to be a bit longer then the 1st keg from the US Virgin Islands to Bermuda. We also expect to have some rough weather and can only hope to not be too bad. Today is a beautiful day and everybody appears to be ready! I have decided to not go on the 2nd leg of the journey but instead gave my spot to my friend Michael Atallah so he can capture this great expedition on film.

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