When Nikkey Ward started free-diving over a decade ago, she quickly noticed the impact of garbage and plastic under water's surface.
"You're diving and there's garbage there. It's everywhere," she says. "You notice things like — there's not that many starfish this year."
Since then, Ward has been involved in several volunteer ocean projects, including one summer at Camp Suzuki on Gambier Island where she learned how to be an environmental steward within local communities.
Ward is working toward her next big project, the North Pacific 2018 eXXpedition, which is an international group of all female voyagers who tour the seas collecting samples of plastics and pollutants and then share their findings with other global scientific researchers.
The North Pacific 2018 expedition will have two excursions: The first sails from Hawaii to Vancouver from June 23 to July 15 and the second explores remote coastlines from Seattle to Vancouver Island from July 21 to 28.
"The aim is to better understand the toxic exposure in women," the website states. "Scientists estimate that everyone alive today carries within her or his body at least 700 contaminants, most of which have not been well studied."
Ward is still short of the funds needed to get there. So, she's launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the $4,900 in crew costs required. Of the total cost, $2,500 is necessary to confirm her trip by the end of January.
She plans to be on the second leg of the trip and is selling her paintings of the Southern Resident Killer Whales —Orcas — because they're near extinction. There are only 76 of the local subspecies left, according to recent data out of Washington state. "They're such a symbol of the West coast," she says. "It's so much easier for people to change their behaviour or care when they can put a face to it."
The original paintings sell for $76, and she's painting other Orcas as she goes. "If somebody has a specific whale they want me to do, then I can custom paint," she says. There will also be limited edition prints, five of each whale. Also, she's hand painted two canoe paddles.
So far, Ward has not hit her goal, with funds sitting at $2,084 as of the first week in January.
Launching in 2014, previous eXXpedition trips included Great Britain and the Caribbean Sea last year. They use different techniques for research like blood and urine samples to test pollutants, DNA fingerprinting tools to assess genetic risk and geolocation technologies for crowdfunded global experiments, the website notes.
For Ward, the cleanup is a huge part but so is raising awareness. She's looking forward to the second leg of the trip since data will already have already been collected on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Ward encourages individuals to make personal choices. "Stop using plastic or recycle it properly," she says. "If you see litter around a river, pick it up. If you're going out for a walk, take a trash bag with you."
For more on Ward's campaign, go to www.generosity.com/volunteer-fundraising/76-orcas-fighting-microplastics-in-the-pacific/x/17032147
***Please note, this story has been corrected to reflect that Ward spent one summer with Camp Suzuki, not two as was previously stated.
