Project Kaisei - Capturing the Plastic Vortex

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On The Kaisei	On The New Horizon

2010 Expedition

In August of 2010, Project Kaisei undertook its 2nd expedition to the North Pacific Gyre to continue its studies regarding the movement of marine debris in order to better plan for a larger cleanup in the future. On the trip was marine scientist Nicholas Mallos from the Ocean Conservancy which mobilizes individuals and organizations around the globe via their International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) program. The voyage launched the Ocean Conservancy’s 25th ICC, and brought a new collaboration to combine shore and sea‐based cleanup to offer hope that a comprehensive approach to this problem can be realized. On the expedition Project Kaisei worked closely with NOAA and the University of Hawaii to help validate some of the debris tracking models that each group had established.

View Kaisei’s Expedition from August 2009

Follow the Kaisei and New Horizons vessels with the Project Kaisei Interactive Voyage. View Video messages sent directly from the kaisei and New Horizons as they voyage to the North Pacific Gyre to explore and document the Plastic Vortex.

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Project Kaisei and Scripps Oceanography

Due to its immense vastness, the ocean’s size usually masks 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/

In 2009, Project Kaisei embarked on its first expedition to the North Pacific Gyre. It had two vessels on the month-long trip in August, the “Kaisei”, which is our group’s namesake (a 151ft brigantine), and also the “New Horizon” from Scripps Oceanography. Each research vessel had a crew of scientists and volunteers on board in order to begin to document many of the impacts that might be occurring as a result of the large amounts of floating waste in this area of ocean. Research was carried out for material science, toxicity, invasive species, ecosystem impact and also new catch methods to develop ways for removing some of the debris in the future in a larger scale.

In 2010, the expedition with the Kaisei studied debris flow and helped to verify some of the modeling on debris movements that scientists from the University of Hawaii and NOAA had been working on.

The goal is to learn more about how to efficiently remove some of the floating plastic, and to then use new remediation techniques to process the material into a secondary product. This includes potentially turning plastic into fuel, or other products which can create a value for what is being removed from the ocean surface. We intend to test new, and scaled-up catch methods on future expeditions, so that we can determine the economics and physical inputs needed for calculations on what a large scale cleanup effort in the future might entail. Passive netting and catch methods are something we believe in, as they require low fuel input, and have very low marine life impact. If it is shown that the volume of material extracted from the surface can justify the processing of the material at sea into fuel, then this would allow part of a large mission to be subsidized by some of the fuel generated from the waste that is caught. Inspiring the use of this new waste-to-fuel technology on land is also a key factor in improving prevention of materials that could then end up in the ocean if not treated or managed well on land.

We will also deploy new scientific equipment for us to better map the size, scope and scale of the area in the North Pacific Gyre, again so we can better understand what solutions would be best suited for cleanup and prevention. Project Kaisei believes that some cleanup is possible, and is building a global collaboration of businesses, innovations, science and knowledge from the fishing community to help bring together options for a large scale cleanup in the future.