Salmonella, mounds of excrement, and hefty citations are nothing new to Jack DeCoster, whose Iowa henhouses were blamed for last month's nationwide egg recall. DeCoster has done business in Turner, Maine, his hometown, for over 60 years—and has incurred a decades-long list of violations there. DeCoster's history of legal cases in Maine demonstrates that the more recent labor, environmental, and public health offenses are part of a long pattern that continues today, and in several states.

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.