Surprised by Wind and Waves in Pacific: Giant Plastic Eco-Boom Breaks up, Will soon wash up on Hawaii Beaches
Excerpts from Associated Press, January 6, 2019 (with appropriate corrections in parenthesis)
…A trash collection device deployed to corral plastic litter floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii has broken apart and will be hauled back to dry land for repairs (is now part of the plastic litter).
Boyan Slat, who launched the Pacific Ocean cleanup project, told NBC News last week that the 2,000-foot (600-meter) long floating boom will be towed 800 miles (1,300 km) to Hawaii.
(Prediction: It will continue to break up and will eventually become part of the flotsam arriving on Hawaii’s beaches. This will be a prize for beachcombers!)
If it can’t be repaired there (it can’t), it will be loaded on a barge and returned to its home port of Alameda, California (yeah, sure).
The boom broke apart. (Apparently the designer was surprised to find) under constant wind and waves in the Pacific….
KITV: “We'll be working from Hawaii in the coming months. We may be able to use the help of people locally on Oahu to help with relaunching the system." Slat says the crew will arrive on Monday. Repairs are expected to take a few months.
Link: Maersk Transporter tugboat
read … Attention Rich Enviros—Please Give More Money to this Project. Pleeeeaase!
NBC News Jan 3, 2019:
$360M Project -- a critic who has followed Slat’s project since he unveiled it more than five years ago said the failure was predictable…Her words before Slat launched his prototype in the Pacific now sound prescient. “The ocean is strong and powerful,” she told USA Today last summer, “and likes to rip things up.”
Hawai’i Free Press May 12, 2017:
Eco-Cash: Dropout Raises $21M to Deploy Miles-Long Booms in Non-Existent ‘Garbage Patch’ – “Really obvious question: How long until wave action tears up these booms?”
(Yes, you read it here first May 12, 2017.)
The Verge: WHY SO MANY OF US WANTED TO BELIEVE IN AN OCEAN CLEANUP SYSTEM THAT JUST BROKE
Flashback to Cleanup Boom Awards and Fluff Pieces:
Reality for the few who can grasp it: Ocean Patch Claims Are 99.5% Garbage (Reading this article will make you smarter than Time Magazine, Fast Company, the United Nations, and 21.7 millionaires.)