- Kwai, the 140-foot sailing vessel, sailed from the Hawaiian port of Hilo heading towards the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
- The crew collected more than 100 tons of plastic garbage and ghost nets.
- Drones onboard the Kwai assisted the vessel to collect the debris and store it in the ship’s cargo hold for recycling and re-purposing at the end of the voyage.
Ocean Voyages Institute, a nonprofit organization, has successfully removed more than 40 tons of fishing nets and consumer plastics from the area known as the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, or more commonly known as the Pacific Gyre, reports Safety4sea.
Kwai to remove ghost nets
The sailing cargo ship, S/V KWAI, arrived in Honolulu on May 15, having completed a 25-day clean up mission. In the Pacific, between California and Hawaii, four ocean currents converge to create a vortex that collects huge amounts of plastics.
A prime target for OV Institute’s 2019 voyage was the fishing gear called “ghost nets”. Often weighing tons, these massive nets of nylon or polypropylene drift for decades, amassing plastic debris, ensnaring wildlife, and even entangling ships.
An estimated 600,000 tons of this abandoned gear ends up in the oceans every year. According to the United Nations, some 380,000 marine mammals are killed every year by either ingesting or being caught in it.
“Satellite technology played a key role in our recovery effort, offering an innovative solution to finding areas of dense plastic pollution,” said Mary Crowley, Founder and Executive Director of OV Institute. “The nets and other debris are signs of the proliferating plastic pollution that poses threats to marine life, coastal environments, shipping, fisheries, wildlife and our health.”
Drones to detect debris
OV Institute utilized expert drone operators on board, flying survey patterns off of both KWAI and plastic survey vessel AVEIA to find additional debris.
The effectiveness of this year’s mission reinforces our plan for expanded clean up missions in 2020 over a 3-month period, using the S/V KWAI and additional clean up vessels, one of which will be adapting fishing gear to fish for plastics.
During the past year, OV Institute recruited yachts and ships to attach satellite trackers to the ghost nets they encountered.
Overall, Kwai normally sails transferring cargo and trade under sail on routes between Hawaii, the Line Islands of Kiribati and the Northern Cook Islands.
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Source: Safety4sea
