2010 Kaisei Expedition Blog >

Project Kaisei Launches Second Voyage to the North Pacific Gyre, Read more...

The Mission

Project Kaisei, the ocean clean up initiative of Ocean Voyages Institute, is based in Sausalito and Hong Kong, was established to increase the understanding and the scale of marine debris, its impact on the our ocean environment, and how we can introduce solutions for both prevention and clean up.

Our main focus is on the North Pacific Gyre, which constitutes a large accumulation of debris in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet.  To accomplish these objectives, Project Kaisei is serving as a catalyst to bring together public and private collaborators to design, test and implement break-throughs in science, prevention and remediation.

Kaisei means “Ocean Planet” in Japanese, and is the name of the iconic tall ship that was one of the two research vessels in the August expedition.  The other was the New Horizon, a Scripps Oceanography vessel that was arranged via a new collaboration between Project Kaisei and Scripps to provide additional research on the impacts of debris in the gyre.  Each vessel obtained a wide variety of samples from this part of the ocean which are now being analyzed.  What was evident was the pervasiveness of small plastic debris that was found in every surface sample net that was used for regular sampling over 3,500 miles between the two vessels.   

In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second Expedition to the North Pacific Gyre, where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research, and in particular, to test an array of marine debris collection systems.  Debris collected will be used to further study the feasibility of converting this to fuel or other useable material.  As a collaborative action program, Project Kaisei is seeking sponsors, participants and leaders in their respective industries who can help to make a difference, on land, or at sea, in reducing marine debris.

Project Kaisei - August Expedition

Project Kaisei and Scripps Oceanography

Due to their their immense vastness, the oceans often mask how much humans might be negatively impacting marine ecosystems. This may be especially true of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre in the North Pacific Ocean where debris is thought be accumulating at a gathering point of oceanic currents. Just how much influence human-produced plastic and other debris is impacting the North Pacific Gyre, roughly a thousand miles off California’s coast, has been speculated in recent news reports and other media. Scientifically, very little is known about the size of the problem and threats to marine life and the gyre’s biological environment. From August 2-21, 2009, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, with support from the UC Ship Funds and Project Kaisei, dedicated one of the first scientific missions to explore and analyze the problem of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre. The graduate student-led Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon explored threats from several angles, with research that included surveys of plastic distribution, investigations of floating plastic, and assessments of impacts on sea life. Visit SEAPLEX at: http://sio.ucsd.edu/Expeditions/Seaplex/

EUROPEAN UNION TO INVESTIGATE SOLUTIONS FOR ‘PLASTIC SOUP’

‘De Europese Commissie beschikt niet over afdoende wetenschappelijk bewijs voor het bestaan van een eiland van afval in de Stille Oceaan’, laat de woordvoerder van milieucommissaris Dimas weten. ‘Mocht dat bewijs er komen, dan is het een zaak voor de landen in wier territoriale wateren het eiland ligt, of moet de VN ernaar kijken’, aldus Dimas, die al helemaal niet wil ingaan op ‘de hypothese dat een dergelijk eiland in de Atlantische Oceaan ontstaat’. -De Volkskrant

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