Girl Gone Wild: Surfer Mary Osborne's Journey with 5 Gyres

Patagonia surfer Mary Osborne aboard the Sea Dragon.

It’s a sickening image: A decomposing albatross, its stomach pried opened to showcase a collage of plastic lighters and colorful bottle caps. But the famous photograph, taken by Chris Jordan as part of his Midway series, is quickly becoming just a highlight in a saddening collection of portraits of marine animals stuffed full of plastic waste. The scary part? They weren’t out feasting on some mythical “Island of Trash” floating through the ocean, much like we’ve been led to believe by our morning news hosts. If they had, the problem would be manageable—the reality of the plastic pollution situation is much worse. 

“All I knew was there was this big ‘pile of trash where currents cumulate and it’s the size of Texas,’” says Mary Osborne, a Patagonia Surf Ambassador who, in 2010, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with the 5 Gyres team to witness the pollution firsthand. “I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just fly there, document the gyre, help clean it up, and fly back.” With a team of 13, Osborne voyaged from Brazil to South Africa aboard the ship the Sea Dragon to the South Atlantic Gyre, a massive, slow rotating whirlpool where plastic waste accumulates. We caught up with the 31-year-old Ventura, California, native to learn about what exactly she discovered on her month-long expedition:

Read our interview after the jump!

Why I Love the Aark Wildlife Rehab Center

B. Scherzberg

This post originally appeared as a guest blog for Free People.

An injured fawn on the side of the road. A bird with a broken wing. A nest of baby rabbits your dog found. Chances are if you live in an even remotely suburban or rural area, you've encountered wildlife in need of some help. For your own safety and the health of the animal, it's not a good idea to try and tend to it yourself—so what can you do? We visited the Aark Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center, a Philadelphia area wildlife shelter, for their open house, where we talked with volunteers to find out the best way to take care of lost or injured wildlife and what we can do to support the centers nursing them back to health.

When you find an injured wild animal:

•Remember that caring for the animal is dangerous and most often the animal needs professional help. Diet, temperature, humidity, medications and human contact have to be controlled.

• It's actually illegal to care for the animal yourself!

Find out more on the Free People blog.