The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch non-profit group, hopes to clean up half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A supply ship towing a long floating boom designed to corral ocean plastic has set sail from San Francisco for a test run.
After five years of preparation and scale model tests, “this is what it’s all about, this is the culmination of all the efforts,” said an excited Boyan Slat, the 24-year-old Dutch CEO and founder of The Ocean Cleanup.
The Maersk Launcher ship sailed on Saturday past the Golden Gate Bridge out into the Pacific sea accompanied by a flotilla of sailboats and kayaks. The supply vessel was towing a 600 meter-long boom device dubbed System 001, designed to contain floating ocean plastic so it can be scooped up and recycled. The system includes a tapered three-meter skirt to catch plastic floating just below the surface.
The ship was heading to a spot 240 nautical miles off the California coastline for a two-week trial before sailing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating trash pile twice the size of France that swirls in the ocean halfway between California and Hawaii.
Laurent Lebreton, the project’s lead oceanographer, said they believe the Pacific garbage patch contains some 80,000 metric tons of plastic waste. “Plastic has started to accumulate in the ocean since… the 1950s.”
Read the full story at https://www.yahoo.com/news/ocean-cleanup-project-sails-sweep-pacific-plastic-080754157.html.