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Eriksen had been motivated by the plastics crisis eight years earlier, when he had visited Midway Atoll, a speck of flat land at the western edge of the Hawaii archipelago.
八年前，当埃里克森考察中途环礁岛时，他就受到了塑料危机的刺激。中途环礁岛是夏威夷群岛西部边缘的一小块平坦的土地。
There lay hundreds of thousands of laysan albatross nests.
那里有成千上万个拉桑信天翁的巢穴。
Led by the biologist Heidi Auman, Eriksen’s visit was focused on the amount of plastic that the birds ingest as food.
在生物学家海蒂·奥曼的带领下，埃里克森考察关注的是鸟类将塑料作为食物的摄入量。
Albatross parents feed their young the shocking range of plastics that litter the island and its waters – toothbrushes, utensils, wires, cigarette lighters – providing a false sense of satiety.
成年信天翁用散落在岛上及其水域里的各种塑料——牙刷、餐具、电线、打火机——喂养幼鸟，让它们产生一种虚假的饱腹感。
Many of the birds die, of course, and their rotting carcasses burst open to reveal stomachs overstuffed with plastics.
很多信天翁自然都死了，腐烂的尸体裂开，露出塞满塑料的胃。
Eriksen is a man of action.
埃里克森是个行动派。
He dedicated his life to bringing what he witnessed at Midway Atoll to those who were unaware of how humanity’s love affair with plastic had become a horror show for our oceans.
他一生致力于将他在中途环礁岛所目睹的一切带给那些人--这些人没有意识到人类对塑料的热爱已经成为对海洋的一场恐怖表演。
In 2003, he paddled 2,000 miles down the Mississippi in the Bottle Rocket, a raft made of 232 two-litre plastic bottles, to bring attention to the waterway’s pollution.
2003年，为了引起人们对密西西比河污染的关注，他乘坐“瓶子火箭船”沿着密西西比河漂流了2000英里。“瓶子火箭船”是由232个容量为两升的塑料瓶制成的救生筏。
Next, Eriksen wanted to see where all the plastic from North America’s rivers ends up.
接下来，埃里克森想看看所有来自北美河流的塑料都到哪里去了。
A laysan albatross adult and chick on a nest next to a rubbish mound collected by volunteers on the Midway Atoll coastline.
一只成年拉桑信天翁和一只信天翁幼鸟将巢穴筑在中途环礁岛海岸线上志愿者收集的垃圾堆旁。
He travelled to the Great Pacific garbage patch – a collection of human debris bigger than Peru trapped in a circular ocean current – guided by the man who is credited with discovering it, Capt Charlie Moore.
他在人们认为的发现者查理·摩尔上尉的带领下，前往了太平洋垃圾带，那里是一堆被困于循环洋流中的人类垃圾，面积比秘鲁还大。
There, Eriksen learned that the patch is less garbage and more a thick soup of fragmented plastics, or as he would write, “a kaleidoscope of microplastics, like sprinkles on cupcakes”.
在那里，埃里克森了解到，这片垃圾带与其说是垃圾，不如说是一碗塑料碎片浓汤，正如他所写的那样，“万花筒般的微塑料如同纸杯蛋糕上的糖霜”。
He realised it would be nearly impossible to clean up the tiny fragments infiltrating marine life.
他意识到要清除渗入海洋生物的微小垃圾碎片几乎是不可能的。
In 2014, after 24 expeditions, Eriksen and a team of scientists would be the first to estimate the total weight of plastics in the world’s oceans: around 250,000 tonnes.
2014年，经过24次考察，埃里克森和科学家团队首次估算出全球海洋中塑料的总重量：约25万吨。
