Photographer Page

Emily Penn

“You're constantly out there reacting to what’s around you. The wind changes direction, the waves pick up, and you have to respond, you have to shift your sails, shift your course. And often your life depends on that response. And it certainly made me think about how I picked my course through life.“ The Sea Dragon vessel at sea.

“I started to realise that the plastic was also inside the fish. And that it was getting into the food chain that we are at the top of.“ Microplastics in a sieve, and awaiting analysis.

“Ultimately we’re all human and we all start from a good place. We just have really different life experiences that shape the ways we think.“ Emily Penn

“That first crossing of the Pacific, seeing all that plastic, was certainly the moment when all my priorities and perspective and everything I’d learned up to that point in my life changed.“ Emily Penn attaching a tracker to fishing debris. Part of her work looks at the movement of plastic flotsam around the planet.

‘At the beginning of these voyages the idea of standing at the foot of a 70ft yacht through waves and winds... you think, ‘could I do that?’ Emily Penn at sea.