Kim De Wolff

Author: kimdewolff

  • Beachcombing, with plastic

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    Searching beaches for polished glass and pretty rocks is a common activity for my family, but my recent work has put plastic on our collective radar. Today my mom and I decided to go down to our local beach, Sargeant Bay in BC, to pick up plastic waste. We were both under the impression that…

  • Please stay tuned!

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    I have not abandoned the blog, nor am I lost at sea (metaphorically or otherwise). Simply suffering from another bout of grant writing – NSF is stealing all my words. I have a bunch of posts in the works, but in the meantime, oooooh pretty sunrise:    

  • Sea Dragon Index

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    While I’m not ‘that kind’ of social scientist, here are some silly statistics I compiled aboard the Sea Dragon using top secret methods: Number of crew aboard the Sea Dragon for Algalita’s North Pacific Expedition: 13 Number of countries represented: 7 Nautical miles sailed between July 7 and July 27, 2011: 2995 Miles actually sailed…

  • “Frightening” Headlines

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    I must confess, the word “frightening” making news headlines was uttered by none other than myself. I can qualify, however, that most of what I said was edited out. You know, the part where I emphasized how the big chunks were quite dispersed, how when you’re out there it mostly just appears as clean blue…

  • Wrapping Up

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    Tonight we were treated to a beautiful sunset over calm seas, setting off a frenzy of last minute photo taking. If all goes as planned this will be our last night with land out of sight, as current conditions should bring us to Victoria Monday evening, and Vancouver late Wednesday afternoon. We’ve seen signs of…

  • A ‘Patchy Patch’

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    The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, well, patchy. We’ve spent the last few days skirting its fringes, while still well within the area the Algalita Marine Research Foundation previously collected dense plastic samples. Just last week, the gorilla trawl was one of the densest Marcus has seen from the smaller trawls used on the crane-less…

  • The Plastisphere

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    Welcome to the plastisphere – the world of things that live on plastics. Much of the debris we’ve bee finding hosts little worlds of algae, barnacles and worms, sheltering pelagic (open sea) crabs and even the odd bivalve. In the image to the left, Marcus is breaking apart a chunk of polyurethane foam to see…

  • Life Re-Canted

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    Unless the wind is directly behind the boat, sailing pushes us on edge, resulting in a tilted world above and below decks. Heading straight north for the first 9 days meant a pretty steep but constant angle, one we’d mostly adjusted to – comfy seats established along with a sense of what and who was…

  • Meet the Crew

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    Now that I’ve had a chance to get to know the people on board, thought you might like to meet them too: From the left: Clive, Dale, Me, Karen, Rob, Hank, Carolynn, Marcus, Tim, Brandon, Ming, Judy (Jin is behind the camera) Taken after the epic swim, this photo was quite the comical production involving…

  • Diving Off the Deep End

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    Finally the day we’ve all been waiting for – calm seas and little wind at the edges of the main east accumulation zone in the North Pacific Gyre. The high-pressure system is no longer a myth. Everyone was up and buzzing at lunch, making plans for what might be our only chance to film from…