Aqua mess

Cleanup Svalbard. 112 volunteers from 18 countries help clean the shores the north most inhabited place in the world surrounded by the Arctic Ocean, Barents Sea, Greenland Sea, and the Norwegian Sea. Currents and the gulf stream bring garbage into Svalbard’s many fjords and onto the shores of this ‘living laboratory.’  

There’s the garbage. You can’t see it from the ship but once on shore if you look down you see it everywhere in small blue, white, green, red bits of plastic, plastic net pieces, larger discarded plastic bottles, buoys and packing crates from the fishing industry. What’s notable is how fine some the plastic is – fractured into to bits by water, rocks, time. We know the small pieces are dangerous as birds and other wildlife mistake it for food and whales scoop it while feeding. We become the plastic we discard purposefully and unconsciously. Either way, the status quo means the end. Time to pick up our act. 

Sundry Svalbard maps over time

This archipelago was visited as early as 1595 by navigator Barentsz from the Netherlands. He died before returning but his maps showed his expedition’s discoveries. Its relatively short human history is one of exploring, hunting, trapping, whaling, territorial disputes and mining. The survival stories here are momentous, the tragedies gripping and endless.

Svalbard was the wild north until in 1920 when Versailles negotiations granted supreme sovereignty to Norway with a few instructions such as it must be a demilitarized zone and Norway is responsible for environmental protection. Nationals of Svalbard Treaty countries, Canada included, can live in Svalbard, hunt, fish, mine and acquire property. Of late Svalbard’s economy is more about scientific research and tourism than mining but it’s possible its past of land, resource claims and military posts will come to the future.

Most mines in Svalbard have been progressively closed and news of further layoffs in a remaining mine is expected this week. Climate-unfriendly coal mining operations are under fire. Intriguingly, Russia also has mining activities on Svalbard in Barentsburg and some miners are Ukrainian, hailing from what war-torn Donetsk. We may have been the last northern ‘outpost’ of the world but it’s globalized. In Longyearbyen I buy a fossil from kids holding a fundraiser outside of the town’s supermarket raising money for Syrian refugees. December, 2015

WAVE

This piece of blue plastic looks like it's a floating organism. It's ubiquitous and nasty though. Each piece of garbage collected has a story within. The approximate location of each cleanup site where the garbage was picked up is noted below the image. The trash came back to Toronto with me to be photographed and archived, not yet recycled. 

Approximate garbage picking locations, thank you Google maps. 

typical - piles and miles of plastic packing rope, plastic rope and fishing nets. Disintegrating and clogging animals stomachs, polluting the land and water.

A piece of plastic something. A grid. We thought plastic made our lives easier but it is choking us. 

The tiny glass bottle still smelled sweet and fruity boozy. You'd have to drink about 15 to get a small buzz I thought at the time I discovered it. Now I know it's Underberg, a German digestive bitter, first introduced in 1846.

Vel cleaning gel, Denmark. Irony

Showa company

Piece of typical fish packing crate - provenance Norway, Stromberg

Norwegian mustard (sennep) Bähnckes

old bullet casing - copper?

I mean, plastic pig. But crackled like an ancient greek vase

plastic hunting knife case, slightly ornate and well used

Asthma puffer for the crisp Arctic air

some kind of lid, reminds me of a gas cap. Trilingual German, English, French

The tiny pieces are awful, they slip through your fingers and back onto the land. Some of the plastic or rope crumbles and turns into flakes of dust when you pick it up. But it sticks around; it doesn't disappear. We become it.

This stood out on the landscape of tans, browns and greys, mostly. Plastic yellow junk. Toxic tulip yellow. 

Master Holdings Ltd in China, produces and sells instant noodles and more. 

Nescafe lid. A multinational company, bad coffee is enjoyed worldwide

Sicilia lemon juice

Cork often comes from North Africa, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Who knows what this object corked. 

abandoned waterlogged and rusted lighter

A Russian vodka, Boaka

Naulilus - Latin form of the original Greek ναυτίλος, 'sailor'

Engine oil

Waja Margarine

reminds me of a surf board fin. Looks a bit like translucent cartilage, but is of course plastic. 

(plastic wrap) Showa company

Plastic refuse collage. This is uncool. A bunch of you fellow people dumped garbage, threw it out or inadvertently lost things and it ended up with the walruses north of 80 degrees in the unbelievable beautiful and cold wilderness. The garbage we found came from many places. What the heck. We can't keep being like this. There's no magical street sweeper anywhere. We have to change our ways. In the meantime, there are many initiatives to clean up trash and thankfully some of them are government-run too such as on Svalbard. Making change is going to take major political action and community action. This Clean Up Svalbard action with the Governor of Svalbard and an adventure company, Oceanwide Expeditions, is a nice model, but one we want to wrap up in coming years because it becomes unnecessary.