Written by 45 Day Expedition crosses Pacific from Honolulu to California,
traversing over 4600 miles of debris filled ocean
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – July 26, 2022 – Ocean Voyages Institute announces
that after 45 days at sea, its sailing cargo ship has arrived in port, docking in
California for the first time, with 96 tons of recovered plastic “ghost” nets, derelict
fishing gear and consumer plastic waste from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
“Our Captain and crew are outstanding,” says Mary T. Crowley, President and
Founder of Ocean Voyages Institute. “I am proud of their hard work and grateful
for their passion to help our ocean.”
Crowley adds: “The ocean is the blue heart of our planet. Keeping our ocean
healthy is vital to ocean life and our own health. Our clean up missions give me
great hope for the future of our ocean because change is possible.”
Ocean Voyages Institute, a Sausalito, CA based non-profit organization uses a 130-
ft. sailing cargo ship, the KWAI, to carry out cleanup missions in the North Pacific
Sub-Tropical Convergence Zone. The 2022 mission brings the group’s total to over
692,000 pounds of plastic removed from the ocean, which includes the Largest
Open Ocean Clean Up In History (340,000 pounds in 2020).
“I am grateful to have been given the responsibility to take on this massive task on
behalf of Ocean Voyages Institute,” says the vessel’s Captain Locky MacLean.
“Many of my crew are from the Pacific Islands, and we all do this good work for
our children, so they will benefit from healthy oceans.”
He continues: “Marine areas cover more than two thirds of our planet and are the
main component of our life support system here on Earth, absorbing carbon and
generating the very air we breathe, they cannot continue to be taken for granted.”
