Ocean Clean up: an update
The huge and ambitious project of 24 years old Dutch Boyan Slat and his team has now reached an important final stage. That is testing his Ocean Cleanup device in the Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and the US West coast (See also my prior Blog). The present system is nicknamed Wilson after the volleyball of Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away. Wilson recently left the docks of San Francisco and is now pulled oceanwards by a tugboat towards the great North Atlantic Gyre. Yesterday it passed Golden Gate Bridge around 2 pm. After 2 weeks of operational testing, Wilson and its escorte will continue its journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, another 1000 nautical miles away. Wilson consists of a 600 m long floating tube with a 3 m deep screen attached underneath to catch the drifting plastic particles. In contrast with earlier models the new system will float in the Ocean with the circular current of the gyre. While drifting with the current the floating tubes will take an U shaped form slightly moving ahead of the particles of the plastic soup. A ship will regularly collect the garbage and transport it back to the coast
Latest news (early October): after the initial 2 weeks testing period, that included the following checkpoints,
- U-shape installation
- Sufficient speed through water
- Ability to reorient when wind/wave direction changes
- Effective span in steady state
- No significant damage by the end of the test
system 001 now seems ready to GO for the actual cleaning phase in the Garbage belt itself.