Blogs / Better Planet

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system comprise the largest surface fresh water system on Earth. It’s of huge importance to the US and Canada. But it may also be the most underrated of any natural resource.
Fully 10% of the US population rely on the Great Lakes for fresh water. The size of the Lakes is what astounds me most. In Duluth, Minnesota I walk along the bank of Lake Superior and stumble upon a sign. This is what it says: Lake Superior is 31,280 square miles, equal in area to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire – combined. It stretches 350 miles east to west and 160 miles north to south. It is the deepest of the Great Lakes; it is over one-quarter mile deep. It was filled with glacial meltwater 10,000 years ago. It holds three quadrillion gallons of water–and this is the part that stunned me–that’s enough water to flood all of North and South America with a foot of water. If it were emptied it would not be refilled by its natural flow until 2179. Over 200 rivers flow into Lake Superior. When you take into account all five Great Lakes, their size eclipses that of the United Kingdom.

Wow.

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Underwater photographer Joel Paschal spoke with me while I was onboard the Alguita as it was being loaded with unripe fruit, supplies, and was passing Coast Guard inspection for its voyage west to California from Hilo, Hawaii. Joel worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to document the cleanup of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, including Midway and the French Frigate Shoals.

Hilo is one of the wettest cities on Earth—the wettest in the U.S., as a matter of fact–and Joel and I bunkered down below as rain pelted the deck. This dispatch tells the horror of our impact on distant places—places we don’t see.

“It’s tremendous to think about how remote you are. You’re on an island far away from any people but you see our impact. Somehow the Earth is so…connected. You can go to the most remote island on Earth and there’s garbage on it,” Joel says. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands begin 300 miles northwest of Honolulu and extend for 1200 nautical miles.

President Bush in 2006 declared the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a marine national monument. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t trash on them. Fishnets, some 20 miles long wash up. Bottle caps, lighters, pieces of toys and parts of an airplane from World War II, are just a few of the things Joel says he found there—on a cleanup trip that lasted three months.

The most disturbing find: refuse ingested by seabirds, killing them. More than 10,000 seabirds are killed annually, according to the WWF, because they ingest trash or get caught up in fishnets. Indeed, more than 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises die each year along with a quarter million sea turtles because of long line fishnets.

We’re still sending tons of trash into the seas. We have rampant disregard for marine life. We can easily make better choices to lessen our effect on the marine eco system. We just need to know how. We need to be better informed. We need to make it stop.

According to one study conducted two years ago, 90% of the fish and shellfish species that are hauled from the ocean to feed people worldwide may be gone by 2048.

We should be celebrating our ocean life, not killing it.

We need better policies to enforce clean up measures.

Three trillion pieces of plastic are floating in the Pacific Ocean, with 46,000 pieces per square mile throughout all the oceans of the world. About 85% of that refuse comes from land—trash from picnics, beach outings, and general litter gets caught up with wind and makes its ways to sea. Or rivers and streams carry it out.

I’m recently back from the middle of the Pacific where I sailed onboard the research vessel Alguita as it prepped to trawl the Eastern Garbage Patch (an area twice the size of Texas that floats between San Francisco and Hawaii).

Miles offshore Hilo, Hawaii, I hung with Captain Charles Moore and his crew as they began their winter voyage to California. Their mission is to investigate the size and scope of the plastic debris that pollutes the area to better understand its effect on marine life.

But the most devastating experience I had was on Kamilo Beach, just past the southern most point of the United States on the Big Island. Moore’s Algalita Institute claims this is the most polluted beach in the US.

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I’m excited to be joining Discover and contributing to its wonderful array of writings. Casual, friendly, concise, and sprinkled with some images is the way in which I’m approaching this space. I hope you’ll enjoy visiting often. This blog will be filled with dispatches to match its title—notes, observations, factoids, stories, and insights—from the most environmentally tenuous and significant places on Earth. These are places I have been and will travel to chronicling the effect we have on the planet and vice versa—its effect on us.

Make no mistake: This is a celebration of the Earth and what we can do in our everyday lives to preserve it, selfishly, for the time being and times to come.

The crafted text exacted from many of these writings will appear as my new book: You Are Here: The Surprising Link Between What We Do and What That Does to the Planet being published this September by HarperOne.

From all over the world—in places such as the Arctic Circle, the jungles of Borneo, Inner Mongolia, and the middle of the Pacific Ocean—posts will serve to provoke discussion. The idea is to put forth a snippet of a gargantuan tale and let you take over by simply pondering, or by further comment or action. My mission is to implant thoughts, images, data, and notions in your head. Once in awhile, I might even make you laugh.

The thesis of my book You Are Here is how we are all intricately connected to the natural resources of the planet, literally from our living rooms and kitchens and driveways to the forests, jungles, deserts, and seas. While investigating this thesis I’ve come across the most fascinating awakenings to things in our everyday lives, and how they are levers to health and welfare thousands of miles away. Often the hidden effect of what we do comes back to us like a severe boomerang blow. This is the wake up call I’m inciting.

These posts may trail my travels to exotic places, but the adventure won’t be lost.

In fact, with your help it is just about to begin.