26 Oct What are we doing to the oceans?

Chris Jordan photographed the decomposed corpses of  albatross chicks a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny island of sand and coral in the middle of the North Pacific. Parent birds feed their nesting chicks what looks to them like food, but is actually plastic flotsam that collects in the nearby Pacific Gyre.

On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

More photos here. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish.