“It really is a ticking time bomb”, Slat said in the statement.
Advertisement
Cunsolo, 28, was one among a workforce of 15 researchers and volunteers aboard the Ocean Starr who a month in the past set out from San Francisco to review the plastic waste as a part of the “Mega Expedition”, a serious step within the group’s effort to ultimately clear up what’s referred to as the Nice Pacific Rubbish Patch.
Researchers say tons of plastic waste covering an area twice the size of Texas is floating far off California’s coast, where the Pacific Ocean currents swirl.
Three of the boats, including a 171-foot mother ship, will arrive at San Francisco’s Piers 30-32 on Sunday, when the next steps will also be announced.
This underscores the urgency of The Ocean Cleanup’s mission to clean it up, according to CEO and founder Boyan Slat: “The vast majority of the plastic in the garbage patch is now locked up in large pieces of debris, but UV light is breaking it down into much more risky microplastics, vastly increasing the amount of microplastics over the next few decades if we don’t clean it up”.
The expedition was sponsored by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Slat, a 21-year-old innovator from the Netherlands.
In the middle of next year, Slat’s group said they will be releasing a report of their findings.
He first turned keen about cleansing the oceans of plastic whereas diving within the Mediterranean Sea 5 years in the past.
The floating booms anchored to the ocean floor and linked in a V shape would aim to skim and concentrate plastics on the surface, while allowing marine life to pass underneath.
“I was diving in Greece and realized that there were more plastic bags than fish, and I wondered why can’t we clean this up”, Slat said. Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce, as well as other philanthropists has been integral in developing the technology as well as in helping fund the organizations efforts to gather data.
It additionally will give a greater estimate of the how a lot plastic waste is within the Pacific Ocean, he stated.
The expedition’s primary goal was to accurately determine how much plastic is floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, by executing the largest ocean research expedition in history.
The boaters are using Global Positioning System and a smartphone app to search for and record the plastic.
Advertisement
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was discovered by Charles J. Moore in 1997 as he returned home from the Transpacific Yacht Race, which starts in Los Angeles and ends in Honolulu.
