Shot while professional surfer and activist James Pribram (The ECO-Warrior) was on board the 5 Gyres Institute's research expedition across the South Atlantic Ocean - the very first mission to explore this region for plastic pollution - Pribram explains why the cause is so important to everyone's health.

It's truly amazing how different each trip I take is and how some trips can be short in duration but long in experience. Getting home yesterday from Thailand was one such trip, mainly because just getting to my first destination took nearly 24 hours. 

There's no better feeling than the anticipation you get the night before a big trip. My last trip I could not even fathom what life at sea for a month would be like. To say I went into that trip blind would be a gross understatement. But since the beginning of the ECO-Warrior project, when I was on my way to the south of Chile to report on a pulp mill that was polluting the Rio Itata with chlorinated water, my strategy has changed.