A ship from the American Oceans Voyages Institute has picked up 103 tonnes of plastic debris and old Pacific fishing nets.
This is more than twice as much plastic as the organization received during its last expedition and a new record for how much plastic a ship picked up during an expedition.
Oceans Voyages Institute traces the cheap GPS transmitters that anyone sailing on the sea can attach to stray fishing nets floating around. It turns out that fishing nets are often in large “shoals” with other nets and other plastic debris. In this way, the organization’s ships do not have to look randomly but always know where there can be a lot of plastic debris to pick up.
To date, Oceans Voyages Institute has had only one ship to collect debris. But next year, the organization hopes to get more volunteers and thus have three to four ships that collect plastic debris for recycling.
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