The Junk Raft

Text and Photographs © Peter Bennett

Several Christmases ago, I was taking a stroll along the beach with my young son in nearby Playa Del Rey. As had become my habit, I was looking down at the sand as much as I was looking around at the scenery. These days, it’s difficult for me not to take stock of the Styrofoam and plastic bits I see washed up on the beach along with the other ocean flotsam.

The sad truth is, once I began to understand and saw for myself how much plastic was collecting in our oceans and along our shorelines, it was hard to enjoy a leisurely stroll on the beach the same way I used to.

I had always been somewhat aware of the fact that plastic and other toxins were going down our waterways into the ocean; I had seen it firsthand from my work on the LA River. I had photographed a number of river cleanups for Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR) and watched as hundreds of volunteers yanked and excavated massive amounts of plastic bags from the thick mud and riverbed. After a heavy rain, when the river waters rise high, the tops of trees and branches display the plastic bags they’ve managed to snag, like ragged flags blowing in the breeze. But all those bags are really just a fraction of the tonnage that finds its way down the river to empty into the sea.

It was on one of those river cleanups that I met a man named Marcus Eriksen, an exmarine turned scientist who had begun a lifelong study of ocean plastics. It was common at river cleanups to have educational displays, and Marcus was talking about the kayak he had built out of plastic bottles and had sailed down the mighty Mississippi River.

Curiosity drew me and my camera over to Marcus and his strange-looking vessel. He enthusiastically told me about his next adventure; he intended to build an entire raft out of plastic bottles and sail it from Long Beach to Hawaii to bring attention to all the plastic accumulating in the North Pacific Gyre (a large clockwise circular pattern of ocean currents), something that was becoming known as "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch."

"How would you like to document it?" he asked me, and without having time to think about it, I said yes.

The plan was for Marcus and his conavigator, Joel Paschal, to build the raft and then sail it 2,600 miles to Hawaii. A team of volunteers, including Anna Cummins,

Marcus’ fiancé, all joined the effort to construct the raft.

Over the next six months, starting in January 2008, I would head down to Long Beach and photograph the next stage of the project. The Junk Raft, as it was being called, was going to be almost entirely built from recycled materials, so I might go down and photograph thousands of plastic bottles being stuffed into some fishing net that would be the raft’s pontoons, or the laying down of old masts to form the raft's basic platform. My favorite time was going to pick up an old Cessna airplane's fuselage from some scrapyard which was going to be used as the cockpit and living quarters for the voyage.

To this day, I am not sure if they carefully planned each stage of the construction or if it came together in some wonderfully synchronistic fashion. Either way, by June of that year, I was looking at a magnificently weird Kon-Tiki-like vessel made from 15,000 plastic bottles, an airplane, discarded fishing nets, and a solar generator.

The Junk raft had no motor, so it would need to be towed out to sea where it could catch the winds that would propel it the rest of the journey. The towboat would be the ORV Algalita, a beautiful, sleek catamaran captained by Capt. Charles Moore, the man credited for first discovering The Great Pacific Garbage Patch years ago on an earlier journey. Capt. Moore looked the part of captain as much as you could imagine. Not that I have much seafaring cred, but it was easy to recognize the confidence he exuded, and that reassured me greatly for the journey that lay ahead.

On Sunday, June 1, we left Long Beach Harbor cheered on by dozens of supporters and onlookers. On the Algalita was Capt. Moore, Anna, myself, and a small crew. There was also a 60 Minutes crew from Australian TV that would join us for the first leg of the voyage to Catalina Island. Marcus and Joel remained on the raft which was towed about 50 feet behind us.

I have never been out on the Catalina Channel, but as the sun set, the unsettling lights of the numerous oil derricks began to brighten, and a pod of dolphins leapt out of the water only to add a sad juxtaposition to this already strange experience.

We moored for the night at Catalina Island, let the 60 Minutes crew off, and then continued on our way the next morning. We spent the next day and a half traveling to our destination of San Nicolas Island, one of the small Channel Islands, where we planned to unhitch the raft and let the hopefully favorable winds take it the rest of the way.

The days are long at sea. On a smallish boat like the Algalita, you feel every wave, and they don’t stop coming.

I photographed what I could just to keep occupied, and when they unfurled the sail for a test run in the late afternoon, I knew I had my money shot. My 300mm lens captured Joel standing beneath the mast as the waves undulated beneath both the raft and our ship.

I can tell you it is quite the challenge to photograph something rocking up as you are rocking down, and as you try to hold steady a long lens in fading light. But with my newly found sea legs and a barely settled stomach, I was able to get my shots.

We got to San Nicolas, but we received reports of strong gale winds heading our way, so the decision was made to keep the raft and boat together for the night and see what conditions were like in the morning. The sea started to get rough, but to keep the raft from floating around uncontrollably, they decided to use an old sea trick and tie the raft to the kelp forest below.

As night settled in, the first mate took a rubber dinghy out to check on the raft. When he didn’t return we started to get worried. It was dark, windy, and we saw no sign of him. It was at that point that Capt. Moore uttered a phrase that I still remember sending shivers down my spine. He turned to me with a stoic but worried look and said, "At sea when things start to go bad, the situation can often deteriorate rapidly." Gulp!

Fortunately, an hour or so later, a faint light appeared on the water and grew brighter, and the first mate’s dinghy slowly made its way back to the boat. Engine trouble, but these were resourceful people, and in the pitch of night he fixed it and calmly made his way back.

Everyone was in a much brighter mood after that, and Marcus and Joel came over from the raft, and we all crowded into the ship’s small galley and ate a wonderful dinner. The plan was to return to Long Beach in the morning, leaving Joel and Marcus to head to Hawaii on the raft, but they soon discovered that some of the lids of the plastic bottles were leaking and the raft was in danger of sinking.

We would still head home, but then Capt. Moore, Anna, and some volunteers would need to make a return trip to Marcus, Joel, and the waiting raft to make the necessary repairs, which basically involved gluing the lids onto the bottles.

As we passed the Queen Mary entering the Long Beach harbor, I have to admit I was happy to be home. It was an incredible adventure, but I was looking forward to stepping on some solid ground. I wasn't there when the Junk Raft arrived in Hawaii, but the 8-week journey brought the international attention they wanted.

The photos I took were published around the world, in newspapers, magazines, and later in books and other recountings of the Junk's trip.

I went on to photograph other stories of plastic and its impact on our waterways, and the animals and fish that live in and around it. It's a truly sad and unfortunately worsening situation. People like Marcus, Joel, Anna, Capt. Moore, and many others are working hard to research the effects on the oceans and hopefully encourage solutions to the problem.

It would be so nice at some point in the future for my son to walk down a beach near him, and all he sees at his feet are some colorful shells and seaweed, and not numerous particles of Styrofoam along the shoreline.