SAFEGUARDING SEALIFE

Protecting the natural environment is at the heart of what we do. It is the driver behind our efforts to remove large amounts of plastic pollution from the world’s oceans. Hence, safeguarding sea life has been the number one driver behind our technology.

For the 116 days of the first mission, a team of scientists and experts conducted extensive monitoring and observation campaigns to understand any possible environmental impact of System 001 and minimize any potential harm to marine life. Over 1045 hours of visual and acoustic monitoring were performed, and during this time no substantial interference with System 001 and the ocean ecosystem and/or marine life were observed; nor did we observe any entanglement or entrapment of marine animals or protected species.

As we continue to learn more about the technology and the natural behaviors of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, we will maintain a vessel nearby with trained observers to see how the system interacts with the natural environment. While extracting plastic, people will always be present to check for marine life before the plastic is lifted out of the water.

We have also conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for System 001 through an independent agency, CSA Ocean Sciences, which did not identify any major risks of our method to the environment.

SURVIVING STORMS

Because the cleanup systems are meant to stay in the patch for long periods of time, it is important that our systems can withstand the forces of the ocean. A main component for survivability is flexibility. We designed the system to be limber enough to be able to follow the waves, and because the system is free-floating, it can drift when subjected to high current speeds.

Through extensive testing, we seek to identify weak spots prior to scaling-up our presence in the garbage patches. After the launch and initial tests with System 001 in 2018, we launched System 001/B – a more modular platform to trial modifications for speeding up versus slowing down relative to the plastic.