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The Galápagos, a collection of islands belonging to Ecuador, and the Hamptons, the collection of exclusive beachside communities on Eastern Long Island, aren’t mentioned very often in the same sentence, but both have similar problems that wash up on their shores on a near-constant basis: plastic bottles, broken bits of Styrofoam, tangled netting and planks of wood.All these little pieces might seem like minor nuisances individually, but combined they contribute to damaging the environment and disturbing the natural beauty of the beaches.
Two natives of the Hamptons have set out to document the common problem, and they’ll soon share what they found with the world.
Dell Cullum of Amagansett, a photographer and filmmaker, and Billy Strong of Southampton, an environmental activist, are set to premiere “Isabela: A Green Explorer Expedition,” a documentary about the environmental state of Isla Isabela, the largest island of the Galápagos. They will screen the documentary for the public at the Mulford Farm Gallery in East Hampton on Sunday, August 21.
Mr. Strong, also known as “The Green Explorer,” leads the audience on a 30-day expedition of the archipelago, filmed and edited by Mr. Cullum.
Mr. Cullum, who’s done local work on short films, music videos, and commercials, took seven months to edit the footage and, after assembling multiple drafts and doing up to 10 hours of editing per day, said the experience has stayed with him.
“It’s like I never left,” he said. “I’m still there living it over and over again. It was like a running joke around the house, but, thankfully, my wife has been very supportive throughout the process.”
Mr. Cullum was approached by Mr. Strong to do the project after Mr. Strong had gone to the Galápagos in 2015 and met with environmentalists to discuss the situation along the shores. Mr. Strong asked Mr. Cullum to travel to the islands with him and film the shores of Isla Isabela covered with debris.
“Billy said, ‘Look, I’ve done all the research. I need someone to capture it all and tell the story with me,’” Mr. Cullum said. “I didn’t even think about if it was something I could do—I just did it. Everything flowed and just happened.”
The duo left the day after Christmas 2015 and, due to their voyage not being officially sanctioned by the Ecuadorian government, had to pay a local fishing vessel to carry them toward the shores not frequented by tourists or locals. Mr. Cullum said they even had to hide inside the fishing boat whenever Ecuadorian Coast Guard officials saw the vessel.
“We chose to do this on the Galápagos because the islands are so remote and so untouched that it surely would be one of the only places where paradise could still surely exist,” Mr. Cullum said. “Because of that perception is why I thought this message of preventing ocean debris was perfect. Because if it’s happening here, imagine what could be happening in the rest of the world? Many people don’t know that people live there: There’s a community, there’s a church, there’s a couple of cars. It is a community that is still on the grow, but it is large enough that they are generating debris.”
Mr. Cullum went on to say that the islands themselves act as a “filter” for debris, meaning the area intakes trash from offshore vessels and nearby areas such as Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. The debris on the shores was in such a large quantity that Mr. Strong constructed life-sized sculptures of people out of the garbage and stuck them into the ground, hoping to garner the attention of those boating by and noticing the amount of debris.
“If people see it here, in the Galápagos, maybe it’s going to make them think at the highest level,” Mr. Cullum said. “If they see disaster at such a pristine location, it will provide the highest attention to the issue.”
While the sight of the waste crashing along the beautiful shores may seem like a grim image, Mr. Cullum assures that not all hope is lost.
“We still have time to solve this problem,” he said, though he warned, “The debris will kill us if we don’t deal with it now. Some 50-year-old plastic from bottles or other debris is found in plankton that fish eat, and some of these fish become food for us. So 50-year-old plastic becomes something that we eat. We need to do it now.”
Mr. Cullum proposed volunteer efforts from community members to clean up the beaches of the Hamptons. While some of the beaches in East Hampton have placed trash cans in the sand before the ocean water as a way to dispose of trash, Mr. Cullum said that it has a negative effect.
“It promotes laziness, which takes away from people paying attention to the real problem. Don’t be lazy, get up, walk away from the ocean and dispose of your trash. If everyone could be responsible and pick up three pieces of trash, this world would be a lot cleaner. The animals, like seagulls and raccoons, come at night and pull pieces out from the cans and not a lot of people pick up the pieces.”
Mr. Cullum hopes that simply picking up trash will inspire people to be more proactive with other environmental situations, like the blue-green algae that closed down Georgica Pond or the red tide that has depleted the shellfish stock in local bays.
“There’s plenty of things to be bothered by out here on Long Island, but we need to focus on the important issues that affect our environment. That’s going to affect us all in the long run.”
“Isabela: A Green Explorer Expedition” will be screened at the Mulford Farm Gallery, 10 James Lane, East Hampton on Sunday, August 21, at 4 p.m. Admission is free. A show of Billy Strong’s photographs and sculptures, titled “Galapagos,” will open that day and continue weekends through October 9.
Jon Winkler on Aug 16, 2016