Episode #5: Finding lots of trash

“Thank you for cleaning up the ocean”, was a sentence I heard quite a few times when I told people what we’d be going on a sailing trip with the Ocean Cleanup.

Every time, I took a few minutes to explain that we were not actually going to clean up the ocean (even though I truly wish it was that easy!). It’s hard to understand that this patch is bigger than many countries – it is huge, massive, immense. Cleaning it up by picking stuff up from 30 something boats would be as effective as trying to sheer a flock of sheep with tweezers. Another misconception of the issue at hand is the consistency of the patch – contrary to belief, it’s not a solid floating carpet of trash out there in the turbulent waters. It’s many many many square miles bigger and consists of tiny pieces of plastic, a lot of them only half a centimeter in diameter.

WE WENT ON A RESEARCH EXPEDITION

In my interview with Boyan Slat for Red Bull’s Terra Mater magazine (October 2015 issue – it’s in German, be sure to get it if you can read this language), he said that in order to tackle the plastic waste, you need to know what exactly you are dealing with. Up until now, there was no scientific data on the quality of the plastic, the size of pieces. So this is what we’re supposed to find out.

After a few days on the Pacific, we realized gradually that we had arrived at our destination. There were more and more pieces of plastic floating around Patches. Small water bottles, buoys, parts of fishing nets, containers of any size. We started doing the visual survey app (by the way, everyone sailing can download it and track trash they see – do it, sailors!) trawling with the Manta Trawl, a metal and plastic device with a net at the end that would collect the micro plastics while dragging behind us. We were instructed to trawl 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening, changing the small nets at the end each hour so we would end up with 6 samples per day. We only managed to collect 6 samples on 3 days. The sea was too rough and since we had to slow down the boat to 5 knots while trawling, we did an average of 3 hours per day.

COLOURFUL LITTLE FUCKERS

The entire crew crowded around the little sample nets each time we pulled out the trawl. Next to some jelly fish, a few weird spider like creatures and small light blue crabs, we found a lot of small plastic pieces, all neatly broken down by the saltwater and UV rays.

The idea that fish and other marine life would be eating these small pieces and thereby pass them on to other animals and subsequently us was more than frightening.

We collected an amount of 40 samples that we then shipped to the Netherlands upon arrival in San Francisco. These samples are being looked at right now and in early 2016, the results will be published. Really looking forward to them!

IMPORTANT Sidenote:

FedEx – STEP UP YOUR GAME!

Before we left Hawaii, TOC (The Ocean cleanup) supplied us with Cooler FexEx Boxes and forms that were pre-filled with all the info on where they were supposed to go (San Fran > Delft). We were to hand them over to a FedEx driver upon arrival. That this didn’t work straight away was partly our fault as we didn’t read the instruction email that was sent to us while we’re on the ocean (incredibly tired and landsick) and we didn’t have the airmail papers. But how FedEx treated the issue was plain fuckery. The people at the branch flat out refused to take the box, only stating it smelled funny, kept on asking if it contained dry ice and when Maureen asked back and I showed them their own website with the box on it: “this box was supplied by FedEx, there is your logo on it – YOU tell us if there is dry ice inside?” they tried to send us away, not interested at all to find a solution for these valuable and prepaid expensive packages. Luckily, everybody else inside that FedEx store who heard the story started giving these incapable and rude employees a rather large amount of grief so in the end, after an hour or so, they were bullied into accepting our package. Hey FedEx, how about schooling your employees better about your products and give them some lessons in customer service while you’re at it? Many thanks.