Cry Of The Ancient Mariner

At the lonely center of the North Pacific Ocean, farther from just about everything than just about anywhere, lies Midway Atoll. I've come with Canadian writer Nancy Baron to the world's largest Laysan albatross colony--400,000 exquisite masters of the air--a feathered nation convened to breed, cramming an isle a mile by two.

Ravenous, goose-size chicks so jam the landscape that it resembles a poultry farm. Many have waited more than a week for a meal, while both parents forage the ocean's vast expanse. An adult glides in on 7-ft. (2-m) wings. After flying perhaps 2,000 miles (3,200 km) non-stop to return here, in 10 minutes she will be gone again, searching for more food. She surveys the scene through lovely dark pastel-shadowed eyes, then calls, "Eh-eh-eh." Every nearby chick answers, but she recognizes her own chick's voice and weaves toward it.

Aggressive with hunger, the whining chick bites its parent's bill to stimulate her into regurgitating her payload. The adult hunches, retching, pumping out fish eggs and several squid. The chick swallows in seconds what its parent logged 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to get. The chick begs for more. The adult arches her neck and retches again. Nothing comes. We whisper, "What's wrong?"

Slowly comes the surreal sight of a green plastic toothbrush emerging from the bird's gullet. With her neck arched, the mother cannot fully pass the straight brush. She tries several times to disgorge it, but can't. Nancy and I can hardly bear this. The albatross reswallows and, with the brush stuck inside, wanders away.

In the world in which albatrosses originated, the birds swallowed pieces of floating pumice for the fish eggs stuck to them. Albatrosses transferred this survival strategy to toothbrushes, bottle caps, nylon netting, toys and other floating junk. Where chicks die, a pile of colorful plastic particles that used to be in their stomachs often marks their graves.

Through the intimate bond between parent and offspring flows the continuity of life itself. That our human trash stream crosses even this sacred bond is evidence of a world wounded and out of round, its relationships disfigured. The albatross's message: consumer culture permeates every watery point on the compass. From sun-bleached coral reefs to icy polar waters, no place, no creature, remains apart.

If albatrosses' eating plastic seems surprising, so do many of the oceans' problems. Like elusive fish, facts often defy common perceptions. Examples:

--Most people think oil spills cause the most harm to ocean life. They don't. Fishing does. When a tanker wrecks, news crews flock to film gooey beaches and dying animals. Journalists rush right past the picturesque fishing boats whose huge nets and 1,000-hook long-lines wreak far more havoc on the marine world than spilled oil.

Fishing annually extracts more than 80 million tons of sea creatures worldwide. An additional 20 million tons of unwanted fish, seabirds, marine mammals and turtles get thrown overboard, dead. Overfishing has depleted major populations of cod, swordfish, tuna, snapper, grouper and sharks. Instead of sensibly living off nature's interest, many fisheries have mined the wild capital, and famous fishing banks lie bankrupt, including the revered cod grounds of New England and Atlantic Canada.