How to free the Pacific Ocean of its burden — Ocean Cleanup

Sunset, Pacific Ocean, as seen from the Californian coastline (U.S.)

Introduction

Five trillion plastic pieces are currently in our oceans, illustrating that novel solutions are urgently needed.

Boyan Slat (official website; Wikipedia) is the founder and CEO of the Ocean Cleanup initiative. Dropping out of school to do the right thing is more than inspiring. He says, in his words, ’ if you’re not obsessed’ with it, your project won’t materialise. Truer words haven’t been spoken.

Ocean Cleanup is also headed by Lonneke Holierhoek (COO) and Jos Huijbregts (CFO). The project vows to ‘clean up 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch every five years’.

Ocean Cleanup—How the technology works

As a vessel sails across the ocean, a U-shaped loop collects pieces of plastic. It maintains a consistent speed and is capable of reorienting itself with the fluctuations of the wind and ocean waves.

Since the initial tests showed that plastic tends to swim faster than the collection system, it used to escape the trap. Therefore the newest design contains a parachute-anchor to adjust the speed accordingly.

This learning-by-doing approach has yielded a near-perfect assemblage to collect the waste.

One can track where the vessel is located here.

Below’s a video from last year (mid-2018) explaining how the prototype would work:

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In mid-2019, another video by Boyan Slat was released outlining the challenges and how they were overcome; at the beginning of October 2019, a press release revealed that System 001/B is now successfully catching debris after a year-long testing period (*Guardian*). EcoWatch has also reported on this story.

Ocean Cleanup—history

According to a mid-2018 video-interview, initially 300 firms rejected the inquiry for funding. Next, $2 million were raised — making it the most successful non-for-profit crowdfunding campaign of all time. Up to that time, $40 million were raised.

The idea here is circular economy, so to speak, as each plastic piece will be up-cycled into a new product.

Ocean Cleanup — limitations

As with any technology in existence, several pitfalls have been attributed to the Ocean Cleanup initiative. First, *the Atlantic published a report on how it will impact the neuston ecosystem — the organisms that live at the air-ocean interface such as fish and blue sea dragons. Since the neuston and plastic co-occur, the author claims collateral damage is unavoidable, and any further garbage collection should rather take place at river mounts and bays. The Atlantic’s* claims have since been refuted since the Ocean Cleanup’s deployment area covers about half a million km² whereas the neuston ecosystem comprises one hundred-fold more area of 50 million km². Therefore the claim that the neuston and plastic are equally distributed is not entirely accurate. Furthermore, the Ocean Cleanup project invited marine biologists and environmentalists to monitor its operations; 150 low-altitude drones were used and 56 inspections took place.

Moreover, a study published in June 2019 revealed that microplastics are unevenly distributed at water column depths of up to 1 km (0.62 mile) (*Scientific Reports*). While this report did not specifically investigate large pieces of plastic that the Ocean Cleanup initiative vows to fish out, it might be important to better understand how any major plastic-removal effort — be it at the level of the surface or deeper— can achieve it without disrupting the marine ecosystem.

Ocean Voyages Institute

Furthermore, Ocean Voyages Institute, a non-profit from California, has also been involved in clearing up the North Pacific Gyre (North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone) that contains the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Its umbrella organiser — the scientists behind it — is Project Kaisei, named after a Japanese word for ‘ocean planet’ (海星).

It’s headed by its three funders: Mary T. Crowley (Ocean Voyages Institute), Douglas Woodring (Ocean Recovery Alliance), and George Orbelian (Ojingo Labs). A trailer for the expedition can be found here.

Part of the project involves a collaboration with commercial vessels. Once it encounters a ghost net, a left-over fishing net in the ocean, it deploys a GPS tracker that will notify a cleanup vessel.

LitterDrone in Spain (investEU)

Within the last two years (2017–2019), the European Union has supported a research initiative — LitterDrone — formed by the Spanish Marine Litter Association (AEBAM), University of Vigo, and Grafinta S.A. Within its scope was to develop drones equipped with high-precision cameras. Using image-recognition software, marine litter at the coastal Atlantic Ocean — specifically, at the Galicia National Park — would be found, photographed, and analysed. The objective of this project was to define the sources of plastic litter and create new ways to mitigate its negative impact on the ocean ecosystem.

The European Commission has vowed to ban single-use plastics by 2021. Yet marine pollution is far from being defeated.

An open question remains: can we use drone-based technology to tackle pollution not only at coastal regions but also at the open ocean?

What the future holds

Needless to say, I would like to see all seas and oceans cleared up using these technologies. Natural disasters may contribute to ocean pollution, too. According to a 2018 report by the *Smithsonian* and other news outlets, the beaches of Dominican Republic were filled with garbage because of a storm.

While I do not endorse blaming anyone for polluting our environment — it may be deliberate, it may be accidental — I firmly believe in and focus my attention on novel initiatives, prototypes, and solutions to facilitate the quick removal of plastic from the waters of our planet.

I hope all these initiatives succeed in due course.