Ocean cleanup device ‘collects’ plastic

Floating boom creator says it retained debris from Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Amission to rid the Pacific Ocean of plastic garbage, which has accumulated for decades, has begun. About 600,000 to 800,000 metric tonnes of fishing gear is abandoned or lost at sea each year. Another 8 m tonnes of plastic waste flows in from beaches.

A huge floating device designed by Dutch scientists to clean up an island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean has successfully picked up plastic from the high seas for the first time.

Boyan Slat, the creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, tweeted that the 600-metrelong free-floating boom had captured and retained debris from what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Alongside a picture of the collected rubbish, which includes a car wheel, Slat wrote: “Our ocean cleanup system is now finally catching plastic, from one-ton ghost nets to tiny microplastics! Also, anyone missing a wheel?”

Ocean currents have brought a vast patch of waste together halfway between Hawaii and California, where it is kept in rough formation by an ocean gyre, a whirlpool of currents. It is the largest accumulation of plastic in the world’s oceans.

The vast cleaning system is designed to not only collect discarded fishing nets and large visible plastic objects, but also micro-plastics. The plastic barrier floating on the surface of the sea has a three metredeep screen below it, which is intended to trap some of the 1.8-tonne pieces of plastic without disturbing the marine life below.

The device is fitted with satellites and sensors so it can communicate its position to a vessel that will collect the gathered rubbish every few months.

Slat told a press conference in Rotterdam that the problem he was seeking to solve was the vast expense that would come with using a trawler to collect plastics. He said: “We are now catching plastics … After beginning this journey seven years ago, this first year of testing in the unforgivable environment of the high seas strongly indicates that our vision is attainable and that the beginning of our mission to rid the ocean of plastic garbage, which has accumulated for decades, is within our sights.