Sea Dragon, Pangaea and our Partners at Algalita and 5Gyres are now in active preparation for an important 2012 expedition to the center of the predicted Tsunami Debris field. Sailing from Majuro to Tokyo and then back to Hawaii, the teams will conduct important research on this evolving crisis- watch […]
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Tracking the Debris from Japan’s Tsunami
Article from The New York Times on Wednesday October 12th 2011 Full article available here: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/tracking-the-debris-from-japans-tsunami/ Tracking the Debris from Japan’s Tsunami Just over six months have passed since a huge tsunami slammed into northeastern Japan, killing thousands of people and wrecking towns and villages along the coast. The devastation on […]
Read MorePop Quiz on plastic pollution from Lindsey
Reposted from Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-south-pacific-islands-survey–p-2011-05-17 The South Pacific Islands Survey–Pop Quiz By Lindsey Hoshaw | May 17, 2011 07:34 PM Alright, let’s see how well you do on this quick test. Can you guess which sample came from the North Pacific Garbage Patch and which came from the South Pacific Ocean? […]
Read MoreLeg 1 of Pacific Islands Survey complete
From Scientific American – May 16, 2011 11:30 AM The South Pacific Islands Survey–We discover what’s floating in the Pacific Ocean! By Lindsey Hoshaw After seven hours of dragging a metal trawl in the ocean, we pulled the manta ray-looking contraption on board—salt water splashing everywhere—to see what was inside. We reached […]
Read MoreDIVING-POLLUTION-ISLANDS-TOURISM
From the steamy jungles of Brazil, the wild wind ravaged coasts of South Africa, Shifting sparkling sands of Namibia, Isolated Island Nations, Fluvial waters of South America, Groaning Glaciers, Freezing Fiords, to the Magically clear blue of the vast Pacific and it’s thousands of Island Paradises. It’s been an incredible […]
Read More(Drifters) Trapped in the South Pacific Gyre
Day 5, and we’ve all settled into the rhythm of a life at sea – cooking, cleaning, sharing meals, waking up at all hours, sleeping, trawling, and starting all over again. The worst of seasickness has passed, as formerly ashen-faced crewmembers are now able to laugh, read, and cook – […]
Read MoreFirst Trawl
The Hi-Speed Trawl, our original design for optimizing time at sea by collecting surface samples at 8 knots, has just come out of the water. We towed it for 55 nautical miles outside the accumulation zone of the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The result, two large visable fragments among a […]
Read MoreRobinson Crusoe Island – and the Scottish lure of the Bag Monster
502 miles and 4 days from Valdivia, Chile, we arrive on Robinson Crusoe Island, a volcanic pinnacle rising over 500 meters above the sea, and only 7 miles long from its furthest points. 6:00am the Sea Dragon idles into the protected harbor, “It’s looks larger than I imagined,” Clive […]
Read MoreA Beach Without Plastic Pollution is Hard to Find
Half of the South Pacific Gyre Expedition Team took a trip to Neibla, Chile to see the sea. We are two days away from venturing into the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre, the last of the unexplored 5 subtropical gyres in the world. On the bus we were all talking about […]
Read MoreTheory vs. Reality – marine debris through leaks in a perfect system
With our long-term partners at 5Gyres, we have had an ongoing disucussion about exactly why…and how plastic debris actually gets into the oceanic gyres…way out to sea. Ironically, the easy part of the discussion is how it gets from your local watershed – a neighborhood storm drain, creek or shoreline […]
Read MoreThe High is Back
The unique challenge of the 5Gyres expeditions is that we need to deliberately SAIL a boat into an area with virtually no wind- the gyres. The gyre center is our constant target. The reason is collects debris is that it is the center of a circulation zone. While we are […]
Read MoreFlat Seas, No Breeze and a Mountain of Trash
1200 GMT Nov. 30 Sea Dragon is at 32°11.77S / 6°14.09W. “There’s another one!” Bonnie yells, pointing to a bobbing pink ball a quarter mile away. I run to the back of the Sea Dragon and throw the throttle in neutral, letting the momentum of this 50 ton ship glide […]
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