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Sailing into the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch

April 10th, 2008 by nynerd

I just received this email. It’s funny, I had the same thought, I wanted to sail out and see what all the fuss is about… these guys really did it! Amazing job, my hat is off to you. Here’s the info straight from the source:

Hey NY Nerd,

I wanted to pass you over a piece we are doing on the North Pacific Garbage Patch, I thought it would be great content for viewers of the site.

At VBS.tv we had read all the articles about this environmental problem but didn’t see much in the way of video. So curiosity and the challenge compelled us west to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to show what other people had only been writing about. We go all the way out ( 2 straight days on a sail boat) expecting to see a floating dump, looking for our money shot that will make us famous.

Here’s the bad news, there is no money shot. What people don’t get is that it’s not really a patch and it’s not really an island, both of which you might be able to contain and control. No, what we found is much worse. It’s like a gigantic toxic stew and it’s a big big problem that we need to pay attention to now.

We decided to go against the conventional wisdom that internet video is for those with short attention spans, and are rolling out 12 episodes.

You can go here to view the trailer for Toxic: Garbage Island and follow the series – http://www.vbs.tv/shows/toxic/garbage-island/

TOXIC Garbage Island Part 1 of 12 – http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
Searching out the Pacific Ocean’s mythical floating trash heap.

TOXIC Garbage Island Part 2 of 12 – http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308600
The ORV Alguita casts off for the middle of nowhere.

TOXIC Garbage Island Part 3 of 12 – http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308604
The Captain nets a moon jellyfish, nature’s plastic bag.

Parts 4 – 12 run through the next two weeks.

The host, Thomas Morton, will be on CNN Headline News to discuss Toxic: Garbage Island: April 12th & 13th @ 7:30pm, 9:30pm and 12:30am if you find your self flipping through the channels.

2 Responses

Bob Holness writes:

April 11th, 2008 at 9:17 am

The great thing about the Internet up until a year or so ago was people, like you, doing this kind of stuff, writing up an article and posting pictures to the Internet so that people from around the world could stop and read at their leisure.

Nowadays all this great content is being published in video form, which is great if you have oodles of free time or want something to do in the evening but is crap if one just wants to skim some articles to find something interesting or wants something one can keep to one side and casually read in free moments, rereading sections that are hard to follow or flicking over to an encyclopaedia or other resource when encountering new terms and concepts.

Obviously people like producing video and the masses like watching it, but there is no substitute for a well written article: I only hope that, over time, publishers of serious video will accompany them with first rate articles for the rest of us.