Refugium Origins
“In evolutionary ecology a Refugium is an area that shelters a relict population of a species was once more widely distributed”
For the origin of this project I trace an anchor line back to Palmyra Atoll, and the 4 months I spent marooned there 3 decades ago.
The flotsam and jetsam that snagged there on the lonely strands of beach- flip flops and lightbulbs, drink bottles, colourful pieces of plastic and glass fishing floats from Japanese fleets long past- held a powerful sway in my small world.
This was the front edge of the wave of marine debris that we now recognize and fight to contain, clean up, and stop creating.
The wrongness of it was evident then, and especially there in a place of staggering beauty and vast isolation.
But weird, and powerful to me was a sense of connection and kinship with these small voyagers washed up on the same shore as myself; things travelling alone and hapless, across the trackless dark sea. Fragmented, scrubbed clean, faded, rounded, salted and weathered; and finally, acquiring that particular beauty that is only made through struggle.
