Jeffrey Barbee set off Across The Great Divide with boat maker/Captain Andre Watson and first mate Deon Tulleken, exposing the most striking hot-spots of biodiversity in the Atlantic Ocean before they disappear. It's the first of a series of journeys undertaken by the video journalist to highlight climate change and global warming.
Sailboat Island Odyssey Has Grim Message for Earth
Published August 1, 2007
(Reuters) - Alarmed at climate change and environmental destruction, photographer Jeff Barbee set out to sail half way across the Atlantic and chronicle the slow death of species on some of the most remote islands on Earth.
Despite having barely sailed before, Barbee got himself a berth on a racing yacht from Cape Town to St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, posting blogs, pictures and video on his Website www.jeffbarbee.com via satellite phone along the way.
"When you look at what's happening to islands around the world and what we're doing to them, it's like a microcosm of what we're doing to the planet," Barbee told Reuters after his 4,440 nautical mile voyage to Senegal, where he was organizing the next stage of his odyssey to Cape Verde in the mid-Atlantic.
After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the British sent defeated French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to St Helena to die, and since then many of the island's unique species of plants and animals have gone the same way, or risk doing so before long.
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In mid-winter three of us boarded a 55ft sailing yacht under Cape Town's Table Mountain to rediscover islands in the Atlantic and what they can teach us about coping with climate change.
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Grantee
Jeffrey Barbee was born in the mountains of Colorado and brought up in the African country of Malawi and works as a photojournalist out of his studio in Johannesburg, South Africa. Starting his...
