small world!!

i was at mike's house the other week and for some reason i thought to mention that i was entering the 5 gyres contest. he perked up a bit and went to another room and came back with the book plastic ocean asking if i'd read it. coincidentally i hadn't read it, but did own it, and in fact had even held up the book in my video, haha! here's the crazy part. mike's neighbor wrote the book. and mike is mentioned in it. and the reason mike knows much about gyres in general is cause he was with the author when he first like "discovered" the "garbage patch."

amazing cool!

since then mike has been EXTRA amazing. he wrote the nicest things on fb reminding people to vote. and he even talked to author captain moore about me to see if he had room for me on his next trip with his own organization: algalita marine research institute. the last few years i've really come to love mike. he's is always supportive and i have always so appreciated his giving me the chance to run the steering program all those years ago. he's taught me so much and i've really come to think of him as my mentor. :) so lucky to know him!

5 gyres expedition

earlier this month i entered the 5 gyres expedition contest. person with the most facebook votes won an expedition with 5 gyres to learn more about the issue of plastic pollution in our oceans. important stuff! i didn't win the contest (did reasonably well tho, placing in the upper middle) but so many people were so supportive! there was the usual voting and commenting, but people even shared, reposted, and reminded their friends to vote. it was really sweet.

for me, the contest wasn't even close. the day i put up my video the first place guy already had 1.9k votes. and the gap got even wider as time progressed. but apparently there was all kinds of controversy about the winner. turns out the both first and second place had bots voting for them, but for some reason 5 gyres only disqualified one of the guys. weird stuff! but anyway, the guy who gets to go is a nature photographer so that's pretty great since i'm sure his reach is much bigger than most.

special mention goes out to rip for helping with the video. i had my ideas, but rip made the video much funnier and made it about a million times better than what i could've done, so thanks!

another mention goes to mike whom i'll talk about in my next post.