SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Far away from California’s coast, where the Pacific Ocean currents swirl, the blue of the sea was replaced by fishing nets, buckets, buoys, laundry baskets and unidentifiable pieces of plastic that floated past the Ocean Star, a ship carrying a team of scientists and volunteers gathering data on plastic garbage.
“We were surrounded by an endless layer of garbage,” sad Serena Cunsolo, an Italian marine biologist who works for The Ocean Cleanup. “It was devastating to see.”
Cunsolo, 28, was one of a team of 15 researchers and volunteers aboard the Ocean Star who a month ago set out from San Francisco to study the plastic waste as part of the “Mega Expedition,” a major step in the organization’s effort to eventually clean up what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The 171-foot mother ship returned on Sunday to San Francisco, carrying massive white bags filled with plastic garbage along with two sailing boats with volunteers who helped collect the garbage samples.
Most of the trash they found, including a 1-ton fishing net, is medium to large-sized pieces, as opposed to confetti-like plastic shards that are often ingested by fish and birds, said Boyan Slat, who founded The Ocean Cleanup and has developed a technology that he says can start removing the garbage by 2020.