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Project Kaisei was started in late 2008 by three co-founders from the San Francisco Bay Area, all with many years of ocean stewardship and activities behind them. As ocean lovers, Mary being a long time sailor, George a surfer and expert on surfboard design, and Doug with his open water swimming and paddling racing, each had different contacts and abilities to contribute to the group. With Doug living in Hong Kong, the group set up two points of operation on either side of the Pacific (San Francisco and Hong Kong) to help begin to bring all parties to the table to stem the flow of plastic and marine debris into our ocean. The initial focus was to draw attention to the amount of plastic that has been building up in our waters under our watch in the last 50 years, but Project Kaisei quickly turned into an organization that was building a global collaboration of science, industry, technology, innovation and policy to help bring about solutions to the way we treat waste in our daily lives, much of which finds its way to the sea.
The group has since been recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2009 as a Climate Hero, by Google as a Google Earth Hero for its work with a video blogging voyage tracking system, and it was recently part of the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2010.
Marine debris created by industrial and consumer waste is a formidable hazard for the ocean ecosystem, marine life and our own lives. Samples from the North Pacific Gyre have shown that roughly ninety percent of marine litter is made from plastics, a class of pollution that is growing at a rapid rate, outpacing global recycling capacity and infrastructure, as societies around the world consume more disposable items.
Given the importance of the ocean to our lives, concern should be placed not only on the quantity of this marine debris, but also on understanding the potential biological impacts that these synthetic organic polymers may have on aquatic species, ecosystems and humans. We need to prevent further accumulation of marine debris in our ocean and apply new technologies to begin removing this waste. We believe that collaboration with science, technology, policy, industry and education is what is needed to bring the world along to help with this issue.
Kaisei is the name of the iconic brigantine vessel used in our expeditions, but also roughly means "Ocean Planet” in Japanese. In August 2009, Project Kaisei’s first expedition was launched, along with 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. |
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