What is it?
It’s an adventure into the fringe of known coastlines in Europe, with two goals, one to keep inspiring people about what an amazing world we live on and secondly to highlight the out of control situation we face with marine litter, specifically in the North Atlantic. I’m a photographer so by documenting, talking about and making people open their eyes to the problem through images is the best way I know of doing this. It’s a non statistical, purely visual way of representing what a huge problem marine litter is to the environment. We as surfers know this (check out the latest series of stats from beach cleans by SAS here), but I want to bring it to the general population with high impact images, and through exhibitions and talks with shots from some of the remotest coastlines of Europe. It’s not until you see a Macdonalds wrapper on a wild bit of Icelandic beach, which originated in North America, that you can understand the problem. What’s more we can all sort this problem out our selves. As well as blogs, I’m also doing a series of talks as I go, they started at The London Surf Film Festival and will continue as the project progresses.
Why?
Because it’s a massive problem, not just for water users but for the whole marine ecosystem. Surfer’s see it everyday, I see it swimming taking shots everyday and it sucks. The fact that SAS took 2.5 tonnes off Perranporth beach in a day illustrates the scale. But the problem is the general population are numb to stats, we get them rammed down our necks everyday. But images are irrefutable, immediate and have the power to change peoples perceptions of the world.
How?
I’m hitting the road, going to some places (Greenland, Norway, Iceland, UK, Russia) I have been before and to others where research has led me to find the problem as being at it’s most acute. It’s still about adventure and surfing, but there is the overriding mission to present this problem visually and through the medium of surfing people want to come and hear about it. It’s all about exhibitions and talks on the ground, as well as stunning images online. I already do a lot of slideshow style talks, and I know first hand the impact of my photography and tales of adventure, so this is going to be an extensions of that.
Can people help?
If anyone wants to help from a point of view of research or raising issues then please contact me, likewise if you’d like me to come and speak to groups in the autumn about the expeditions and the environmental disaster that is Marin Litter then again drop me a line here – timnunnphoto@gmail.com
From a sponsorship point of view, I am mostly self funding the whole mission, I do have some help from Lunasurf and Heimplanet but I am always looking for sponsorship. I also have my own version of a crowdfunder rolling. The more help and sponsorship I get the more I can do, you can get involved by heading over to my print shop. There you will find a load of options, all of them designed so you get a lot more back than you have to put in, the project is vital and will happen whatever but all help means it can be achieved in even greater depth.
Tim Nunn
More info here: theplastic-project.com
