THE Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a vortex of trash created from an ocean gyre in the central North Pacific. It lies halfway between Hawaii and California, and there is an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash floating.
The gyre’s rotational pattern draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean including coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the region.
The nonprofit Ocean Cleanup was founded in 2013 by 18-years-old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat. Their mission is to develop advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Ambitious dreams have now become reality as the Ocean Cleanup deploys its $20 million system and the cleaning vessel launched on September 8, 2018 from San Francisco undergoing a two-week trial.
The floating boom system, with the help of dozens of more booms, is estimated to clean up half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within the first five years. Each boom will trap up to 150,000 pounds of plastic per year as they float along the currents between California and Hawaii. The floating boom system, after undergoing testing, will be towed out 1,400 miles to the garbage patch around mid-October and begin collecting trash. The floating boom drifts along with the local currents, creating a U-shaped formation. As the boom floats, it collects trash in the U shaped system, which has 10 feet of netting below it to collect smaller fragments of plastic. Once boom is full, a vessel will meet the boom to collect the plastic and transport it to land for sorting and recycling.
The idea is that the 10 feet of netting is not deep enough that fish can’t swim below it, with the hope that the boom will collect trash and not fish.
