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Kaisei means “ocean planet” in Japanese. Project Kaisei ( website ) uses the Tall ship Kaisei as the figurehead and focal point in an innovative research expedition designed to figure out the best way to clean up and recycle the plastics which are converging in the Pacific ocean and forming an 8th continent. Never heard of it? You need to help us. This is a rescue mission designed to save the Pacific by mining plastic. This 8th Continent has been identified northeast of Hawaii in the Pacific. Sailors and scientists, fishers and individuals have watched with horror, as this new continent comprised of human discards, primarily plastic garbage, has grown and expanded exponentially over the last few years. Also called the plastic vortex, this 8th continent is currently twice the size of Texas and growing.
Mary Crowley founded Ocean Voyages Institute in 1979 and has created Project Kaisei. Mary describes the purpose of Project Kaisei, “ I am a sailor who has had the pleasure of sailing throughout the world’s oceans and am also a committed environmentalist. I urgently feel the importance, especially since this 8th continent is out of sight, of moving forward with cleaning up this garbage dump before it kills major parts of our beautiful ocean and introduces increasing amounts of plastic into our food chain.”
Project Kaisei features a team of innovators: ocean lovers, sailors, scientists, surfers and environmentalists who have come together with a common purpose. Take what we have created and rather than relocating it to another space, detoxifying and recycling it into diesel fuel. These first research voyages, scheduled for summer of 2009, will be critical to overcome the incredibly complex logistics to make this happen. Some of the technology required has never been utilized under ocean conditions. Two voyages are proposed in 2009, which would remove about 40 tons of plastic for experimental recycling while documenting the process. Once, the methodology has been fine-tuned, the removal mission will begin, hopefully no later than 2010.
Funded by individual donations, in kind services and the support we are seeking from visionary individuals, family foundations and corporations. The two million dollar budget will combine ground breaking recycling research, plastic capture experiments which would allow commercial fishers to reclaim their livelihood at sea which in combination with the difficulties and dangers of mining the plastic vortex will all be recorded in a moving documentary filmed on location in the middle of the Pacific. Film updates will allow the public and donors to follow the progress of Project Kaisei.
Join us today and save the Pacific Ocean! Every contribution received will move this project forward toward successful voyages.
Ocean Voyages Institute is proud to announce that Captain Michael Smith has agreed to take Kaisei on its complex research voyages to the 8th Continent and to clean up the mess we have created in this Pacific Ocean garbage dump.
| Ocean Voyages Institute |
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