Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places

Author:Andrew Blackwell [Blackwell, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, Travel, Reference, Environmental Science
ISBN: 9781605294452
Google: VMsI1oAHNPoC
Amazon: 1605294454
Barnesnoble: 1605294454
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2012-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Bravo Watch was quiet that night. There were rumors that Mary was heartbroken to have turned back, that she considered it a major blow to Project Kaisei. It was impossible to know if such gossip was true. None of us volunteers were going to go knock on her door and ask. But it didn’t matter. It was true in broad strokes. It felt like we had turned around as soon as we had gotten to the Garbage Patch. Had we even gotten to the heart of it? If we hadn’t turned around, could we have found the current lines? Could we have found Art’s Great White Ball of Trash?

It’s sad how quickly a beginning turns into an end, with nothing in between. One day you still face an eternity at sea; the next day the voyage is over—though you may be days or weeks from land. It all depends on which way you’re pointed.

We motored through the gloom. I was in the darkened wheelhouse, waiting to log any sightings from the generally fruitless nighttime debris watch.

Mary appeared next to me. We stood together, subdued, staring out at the night, at the murky silhouette of Kelsey at the helm, and listened to the engine drone.

I felt bad for her. The mission had been a great overreach. If our goal had been ecotourism—or pollution tourism—the voyage would have been a triumph. The Pirate King, aggressively self-righteous, never tired of pointing out the irony of us burning so much fuel to get out here. But that didn’t bother me. People burn fuel all the time. They burn it to fly to London. They burn it to take a cruise. We had burned it to try to see something about the world. And though I was critical of Mary’s goals, I could only credit her drive and determination. It was because of her that we were able to be out here, witnessing one of the great phenomena of our time.

I said some optimistic things. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen the current lines, I said. We had seen stretch upon stretch of particles. Places where they were too numerous to count. Places that prompted Henry to radio the bridge, “Oh, shit, they’re everywhere.” Weren’t the particles the most intractable part of the problem, anyway? Hadn’t we seen what we came for after all?

She murmured in agreement, unconvinced.

I watched the navigation unit. The radar echoes of nearby rain squalls crept across the display, primordial blobs of orange and yellow pixels that pulsed with a quiet, mysterious life.

“They look like little amoebas,” I said.

Mary stared at the screen. A tear hovered at the edge of her eye.

“I wish they were islands of plastic,” she said.

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