Barbara Steele:

Flotsam and Jetsam

Traditionally, flotsam and jetsam are words that describe goods of potential value that have been thrown into the ocean. There is a technical difference between the two: jetsam has been voluntarily cast into the sea (jettisoned) by the crew of a ship, usually in order to lighten it in an emergency; whilst flotsam describes goods that are floating on the water without having been thrown in deliberately.

'The North Pacific Gyre (also known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre) is a swirling vortex of ocean currents comprising most of the northern Pacific Ocean. It is located between the equator and 50º N latitude and occupies an area of approximately ten million square miles (34 million km²).
The centre of the North Pacific Gyre is relatively stationary region of the Pacific Ocean (the area it occupies is often referred to as the horse latitudes) and the circular rotation around it draws waste material in. This has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris in huge floating 'clouds' of waste which have taken on informal names, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photo degrades, disintegrating into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested. Some plastics photo degrades into other pollutants. The floating particles also resemble zooplankton, which can lead to them being consumed by jellyfish, thus entering the ocean food chain. In samples taken from the gyre in 2001, the mass of plastic exceeded that of zooplankton (the dominant animalian life in the area) by a factor of six. Many of these long-lasting pieces end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals.'
Extract from Wikipedia

Living in Devon it is difficult to visualise such large scale pollution of our marine environment. Therefore I decided to see how one small area of beach on the 'Trail', below the Red Rock at Dawlish Warren, has become polluted with flotsam and jetsam.

To the west of Red Rock there is a sandy beach which continues to Dawlish, but the area I mainly concentrated on was the small eastern part of the beach which is usually difficult for people to access due to the tide. It has a small sandy area but mostly consists of caves, rocks and pools. Usually I am interested in and photograph the natural environment, but for this project I documented the flotsam and jetsam on the beach and rocks, in the rockpools or floating in the sea. This is our local flotsam and jetsam - not on the same scale as found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - but still indicative of how our waste is impacting the local marine environment.

Flotsam: An installation by Barbara Steele

Having photographed the flotsam found on the beach below Red Rock I printed the images onto joss paper. These pieces of paper are hung onto fishing line, which hangs from a lightweight hoop (recycled from a cider barrel), to make a circular installation. The fishing line is weighted down by small fishing weights.
When removed from the exhibition the joss paper will be made into an artist's bookwork, which not only documents the project but also becomes another form of artwork which can be exhibited elsewhere.