Tonga Diaries - Sickness 🤒

Boats and I are not meant to be.

 

First, it was the sea sickness.

Second, came the stomach bug.

 

If you've heard about bugs spreading quickly in enclosed boat spaces, I can confirm, it is true.

 

But the human body is a wonderful thing.

 

As anyone who has had a stomach bug knows, the body has a very efficient way of rapidly ejecting these toxins.

...sometimes too rapidly...

... (I'll spare you the details.)

 

The Ocean, however, she doesn't have such an efficient mechanism.

So the more toxins we allow to flow into her, the sicker she becomes.

 

Our work on the eXXpedition voyage was to collect data to find out how plastic pollution is flowing from human activities on land into the ocean.

 

We did coastal transects to see what plastic was present on the beaches.

And, sadly, it was present on all the beaches we visited, even on remote uninhabited islands.

Some plastic had come from the Tongan islands themselves like recently discarded, intact, identifiable food packaging.

Others had washed up from distant shores - plastic fragments that were now smaller because they had been weathered and broken down in the ocean over a longer period of time.

 

We looked in the shops, cafes and takeaway restaurants to see what was available for people to buy. Were plastic packaged items the only options or were there alternatives for people to choose from?

We looked at waste management facilites and infrastructure. What is the rubbish collection like? How is waste sorted and processed on the islands and where does it go?

 

Sailing between the Tongan islands, we sampled the surface water to see what plastics and microplastics were in the water.

 

The eXXpedition voyage before us were collecting this same information from in and around New Zealand and the next group are currently hard at work in the Arctic.

 

Each time we did a beach transect, surface water sample or in-land survey, we would send our collected data directly to the Circularity Informatics Lab at the University of Georgia.

They analyse all the data to collaboratively develop global and local solutions to ocean plastic pollution with partners across the world.

 

You could say, our work during the expedition was to conduct the Ocean's medical tests, the Lab will give the diagnosis and with local partners, they will come up with her treatment plan.

 

 

Tonga Diaries continues next week.

 

 

A huge thank you to all of my sponsors:

Anonymous / Anonymous / Anonymous / Anonymous / Anonymous / Anonymous / Claire & Tracy / J M Upadhyay / James Golding / Jasmine Lee / Jaymeena Ahmed / Julia Bennett / Mrs Y Rawal / Olivia Rose / Panache Medi Spa / Rahul Thaker / The Devanis and Sonejis / The Mehta Family / Veena & Virendra Thaker

for your generosity in helping fund my place on the eXXpedition, I am so grateful <3