After several weeks of tracking floating debris from last year’s Japanese tsunami as well as debris from the North Pacific Gyre, the tall ship Kaisei has arrived in Richmond, B.C.
The Kaisei is the primary research vessel for San Francisco-based Project Kaisei, an international program dedicated to raising awareness and implementing solutions to the growing problem of marine debris.
The research gleaned during the Kaisei’s latest voyage will be presented at the Richmond Maritime Festival from August 10 to 12, where the public will be able to board the 46-metre brigantine and learn firsthand about her environmental mission.
“I mean, there’s 330,000—at least—marine mammals being killed every year by either ingesting plastics or getting entangled in them. So whales and dolphins and seals and all sorts of things are getting killed.”
According to UN estimates, at least 80 percent of litter in the sea comes from land-based sources.
Much of this waste ends up in the North Pacific Gyre, more infamously known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a large expanse of remote open ocean where four currents converge, acting as a catalyst in collecting floating materials.
The gyre has become home to huge fields of plastic and other debris from both North America and Asia, and represents one of the world’s great environmental challenges in terms of the scope and scale of the debris.
“We see [marine debris] as a major global epidemic that is affecting the health of the ocean,” says Crowley.
Tsunami Debris
The hundreds of tons of debris swept into the sea by the Japanese tsunami, which is currently floating across the Pacific and beginning to wash up on shores along the west coast of North America, “just adds another layer of bad things happening for the ocean,” Crowley notes.
“I think the issue of the tsunami debris is a very serious one for the ocean and a very serious one for shipping. And in our studying of it, we would like to be proponents of going out there and doing clean-up—getting as much of it out of the ocean as possible.”
As well as tracking the debris, the Kaisei is taking large water samples that will be tested at the University of Hawaii to discover the degree of radioactivity being spread throughout the Pacific.
While the tsunami debris itself hasn’t been shown to have significant levels of radiation, Crowley says radioactivity continues to be dumped into the ocean from the Fukishima nuclear plant.
“After the tsunami a great deal of radioactivity was dumped into the ocean, but the fact is it’s continued to be dumped into the ocean—it’s being dumped into the ocean today,” she says.
“It’s a general belief that the ocean is so large that the radioactivity spreads out and becomes insignificant, but I think there’s a limit.”
On its return trip to San Francisco, the Kaisei will conduct further research on large fields of tsunami debris it encountered off the west coast of the U.S. on its voyage north to Richmond.
“When we do our return voyage, we’ve allowed quite a lot of time to survey off the coast of Washington and Oregon to follow up on some of the sightings we took coming north, and spending more time doing a pattern through the area recording the debris and picking up debris as is appropriate, etc.,” Crowley says.
The Kaisei team is also studying the effects of Persistent Organic Pollutants, or POPs, from collected samples. Land activities and leachates from marine debris are sources of pollutants that can negatively affect marine life and human health.
Cleaning Up
This was Kaisei’s third voyage to the garbage patch, and on each trip the crew salvaged a good deal of ocean trash, but much more needs to be done, says Crowley.
To that end, Project Kaisei has partnered with Covanta Energy, an international waste-to-energy company that can convert ocean waste into fuel or energy.
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