The 140-foot sailing vessel Kwai has departed the Hawaiian port of Hilo headed for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There, her crew will collect over 100 tons of plastic garbage and ghost nets.
The project is led by California-based not-for-profit Ocean Voyages Institute, and less than four days into the voyage, the crew have already removed a variety of plastic debris along with several nets. During the 45-day voyage, the crew will collect garbage with the help of satellite beacons that have been placed on nets by crowd-sourced volunteer yachts and commercial vessels.
Drones on board the Kwai enable the ship’s crew to find the debris, recover it, and store it in the ship’s cargo hold for recycling and re-purposing at the end of the voyage. Read on.
