Unreasonable at Sea day 9 &10 « Gabriella Levine

Unreasonable at Sea day 9 &10

MORE PHOTOS HERE:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52250666@N02/sets/72157632544237510/

Now, we have just debarked from

Firstly a few things I’d not written about on day 8:
Meeting with Daniel & Protei team:
Fireside chat with Depak:

We arrived in Hilo Hawaii in the morning and it looked like this from the deck of the boat:

And there were lots of tanning students.

And there was a giant american cruise ship called “American Pride” that looked even BIGGER than our own boat. It made the MV explorer look tinnnnny!

And there were lots of kids sun bathing:

Here is what the “design thinking workshop” was like:

We waited on line to get off the ship:

We were like little kids on a school trip: first time on land in 7 days! first time in hawaii ever!

The Mayor’s representative (of Hilo HI) greeted us:

Hank Carson, a researcher at the University of Hawaii, who I had reached out to as he is researching plastic trash and went on the 2012 marine trash collection expedition:

Here are some of our notes during the ideation phase:

Then we went to Hank’s office, and we got the privilege of meeting Marcus Eriksen from the 5 gyres (5gyres.org) who was in town.

They place these marker blocks in the water at one prat of the island, and then later pick them up at the beaches, using hundreds of numbered blocks as tracking devices. Wouldn’t it be better to have super cheap honing devices on each ones, or waypoint tracking with GPS? I felt that this could be made fairly cheaply but honing devices especially waterproof ones are quite expensive.

Hank also showed us ALL this sand he collected, fullllll of plastic trash particles.

And he has collected a nice collection of toys:

We made our way back to the ship in the rain (although in a cab), then we went out to eat at Cafe Pesto which I totally hated (extremely expensive and not yummy) but maybe I’m just snobby, then went to “The Tavern” and danced a bit
A bit weird but fun:

Then we went to walmart until closing at 1AM to pick up some electronics and needed gear.

We stopped in this town, although I cannot remember the name of it, before pulling off the paved road to try to find “trash beach” (aka kamilo point beach)

After leaving the paved road, the crew mounted a go pro on the car with a strong magnet:

It was clearly a scary road: look what happened :

We stopped at a lava tube that we saw on the side of the road – it was crazy and cool.

And saw a little skull:

Here I am entering the cave:

and here’s Cesar in the cave:

And here’re some really cool formations:

CAR from gabriella levine on Vimeo.

Then we arrived to the beach:

It looks serene but it is COVERED with trash.

(it is clear that tons of stuff from wood to plastics wash up here)

It turned out there was a hippy festival (a rainbow gathering) happening on the beach at that time.

so lots of camp sites and stuff.
Finally we saw the REAL trash beach and saw rainbow mounds of debris mottling the sandy, rocky beach.

And pulled out into the sand.
There was a hippy lying in the middle of the sand, so I tried to go down around him and realized… we were sinking. And that was the first time getting stuck. So Matt got out and got a coconut and tried to put it under the tire so that we could gain some traction.

But it didnt work. Eventually it took the help of 10 rainbow gatherers to push the car out of the sand.

And everyone was happy.

Here are some more pictures of the trash beach, including our sample collections of water and sand / plastic, and some amazing wildlife (coral, starfish, fish, sea cucumber):

A sea cucumber:

And then we went to a hobby shop to get a remote control, because ours arrived at shira’s house from France a little too late and now are en route to Yokahoma.