By Cath Hough eXXpedition – Barbados to St Lucia The first watch team arose before sunrise to lift the anchor and set sail to St Lucia. After an adventurous first sail, a few days before the ladies were hoping for a smoother downwind passage! We were greeted with a pleasant […]
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Mermaids unite for Caribbean 2017 on Sea Dragon
The arrival of the new crew on board Sea Dragon, sees eXXpedition Caribbean get underway, for their 8-day island hop through the Caribbean. 8 glorious days of science, sea, stories and sunshine. Excited conversations, inspiring stories, laughter, happiness, and anticipation filled the air as eleven strong, powerful and inspiring women came together […]
Read MoreThe Ocean Cleanup: What I’ve Learned
Before starting this trip I had close to zero sailing experience and my sea voyages were a few ferry rides. After 2 weeks at sea I have learned and experienced so much it is hard to sum it all up.
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The Ocean Cleanup: Setting sail from Bermuda to Azores
We were soon back to routine sailing until about 1720 hours when Captain Eric spotted something large and white floating about 100M off the port bow. In addition to the trawl’s catch, we had been seeing mezzo-plastics (several cm-long), some larger, floating by all day but this object was big, coiled on itself like a great white serpent. Eric called out and immediately turned the boat toward the “thing” – we did not know what it was.
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Boyan Slat & Ocean Cleanup: Trawling in the North Atlantic Gyre
Today, with a now experienced crew and a comfortable 15 knot-wind, three back-to-back trawls were performed, each around an hour in length. Lots of millimetre to centimetre-sized particles were visible in the samples of the top few nets. Team member Francesco is currently working with some volunteers to clean the nets’ cod ends and prepare the samples for transportation.
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Cruising
Highlights of the trip so far have involved dolphins; Steph giving an excellent talk about her research with laptop slides on deck and dolphins arching in the background; and bioluminescent dolphins lighting up a dark night like waterborne fireworks. From our perspective, in many ways so out of our element, that there are creatures so at home in the sea seems amazing. Amazing and, inevitably, bittersweet to watch them leaping and sparkling given what we know about how we are changing their world.
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Smooth Sailin’
The calm, clear skies made trawl deployment and recovery very easy. The weather, in conjunction with the ease of deployment, was welcomed by the very wary crew! The only ‘problem’ we had at one point was a pesky Cahow trying to investigate the equipent and whether or not he could make a tasty meal out of it.
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Stars, Satellites, and Sea Lights
As our eyes began to adjust even more to the night sky, we were able to pick out more and more aspects that only being on the ocean in the dead of night would present. The waves crashed against the bow, and we created a wake as we travelled further south. It excited some of the smallest marine organisms called plankton, causing them to illuminate and dance in the sea beneath us.
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Boyan Slat guest blog | Gyre Expedition
I’m currently preparing for another night shift, and reflecting on my experiences of the past few days. After successfully testing the multi-level trawl in a Bermudian harbour a week ago, we then spent three days enduring 10ft swells, 30kt winds and the aftertaste of seasickness medication. The sound of flopping […]
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Rainbows in the cockpit | Gyre Expedition
Our morning began with a surprise squall, which some of the lucky crew completely slept through. Just the Caribbean’s way of welcoming us to her warmer latitudes. The sun was out during part of another bout of rain and we found the end of the rainbow reaching to the aft […]
Read MoreFeeling good in the Gyre | Gyre Expedition
As day two draws to a close, the team’s spirits are on the rise. The sea sickness of day one has subsided and appetites have returned. The weather and swells are starting to calm down and we hope to deploy both Team Science! and the trawl tomorrow. We were able to […]
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Trials and Tribulations of Trawling | Gyre Expedition
After a very productive day in St. George’s on Wednesday, The Ocean Cleanup‘s multi-level trawl was assembled and improved based on their brief tests in Rotterdam Harbor and the crew was well practiced in deploying and recovering it in the calm waters of St. George’s Harbor. This morning we left the […]
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