Sunday, July 19, 2009

Kingman Reef Plastic Island, My Visit




In The summer of 2007 I had the chance to serve as Second Engineer onboard The SEA Vessel Robert Seamen.


The voyage took us from Hawaii to Christmas Isle of the kiribate nation.
this blog mostly focuses on our visit to Kingman Reef with pics and narative.

From Wikipedia:


Kingman Reef
is a largely submerged uninhabited tropical atoll located in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly half way between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa at 6.400, -162.400. It is the northernmost of the Northern Line Islands and lies 65 km NNW of the next closest island (Palmyra Atoll), and about 920 nmi south of Honolulu. The reef partly encloses a lagoon up to 73 meters deep, with the greater depths in the western part. At times, its shoreline might reach three kilometers in circumference; the total area within the outer rim of the reef is 76 km². There is just one small strip of dry land on the eastern rim, with an area of less than 0.01 km². The highest point on the reef is about one meter above sea level and wetted or awash most of the time, making Kingman Reef a maritime hazard. It has no natural resources, is uninhabited, and supports no economic activity.

Plastic Island?

After looking over the small atoll you would not want to get shipwrecked, and I was amazed and shocked! it seemed the Island was made a 3rd of plastic waste!


Old Shipwreck on the reef,
Appears to be an old tramp steamer, The rebar and concrete
must be whatwas remaining of the boiler and machinery. Anybody research this wreck?
Crew's fate unknown, Spooky!



The difference between the debris on the Lee side below is amazing!

Somewhere on the Web, I Believe it was The Aguilita captain was quoted to
say it would take every human being 20 pickup trucks full each to Clean up The Oceans

I am not using this blog as some green crusade, As an Engineer I use,Plastics,Composites,
And other Petroleum based products everyday. Naturally derived compounds are being discovered everyday and recycling of plastics is increasing. Research is finding large amounts
of plastic in the tissues of marine life.

I will be covering in my Blogs great pictures and stories of my Sailing Adventures.
More to Come! Subscribe

Mike McV

PS maybe you could build a raft out of the bottles and line if wrecked there!


4 comments:

  1. Bear with me as I piece this together !

    More coming soon Subscribe!!


    Mike

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  2. Hey Mike great photos. You need more shots with known objects in the foreground to show scale/size of things...how big is the shipwreck?

    Kepp writing!

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  3. Hi Mike! Christine here...from SOL days! Tom passed along your email, and so here I am. Great way to catalogue your amazing adventures! I once visited a remote beach on the southern coast of the Big Island in HI. It was called Trash Beach. Same thing - ocean currents converged there, dumping hundreds of thousands of pounds of plastic and sea trash on the beach each year. It was several feet deep when I was there, and that was AFTER a major clean-up effort. Even the sand grains turned out to be the small pellets of plastic that they melt down to make larger plastic products...puts a lot in perspective when you see something like that - everything goes somewhere ;) keep it up!

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  4. I'm interested in what you are showing, but your font choice is an eye-killer.

    ReplyDelete