GoKawiilGlobal problems are rarely solved by one person or invention — no matter how much they go viral. The Ocean Cleanup didn’t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn’t. What can we learn from this?
In 2019 a nonprofit called The Ocean Cleanup conducted a major test of technology designed to remove plastic pollution from the water.
It appeared to work, and the nonprofit released photos proclaiming its success.
But some scientists noticed something else among the accumulated plastic in the Ocean Cleanup’s publicity photos.
“Earlier this year I warned that @TheOceanCleanup would catch and kill floating marine life,” marine ecologist Dr. Rebecca Helm wrote on the social media platform then known as Twitter. “This week they announced they’re collecting plastic, and their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals trapped with the plastic.”
The Ocean Cleanup team appeared to be oblivious to this consequence of their test before this public criticism.
It’s not surprising that any attempt to remove plastic from here would catch, and likely kill, many marine organisms, because the waters of this region aren’t a trash-filled biological desert. The area is full of neuston, marine life that lives right at the sea surface — species that may not be as charismatic as dolphins or sea turtles but are extremely ecologically important.
“This region in general has very high densities of several key species,” says Helm, now an affiliate faculty member at Georgetown University. “This ecosystem is ecologically important to species that we do care about. We can’t just go disrupting it in the name of conservation and imagine that everything is OK and that you’re doing a good thing.”
Other scientists agreed.
“Honestly, if that was me, I would have totally stopped,” Dr. Kim Martini, a physical oceanographer and founder of the oceanography equipment designer and supplier Tini Scientific, says of the incident. “Because the whole point is supposed to be about how you’re saving animals that live in the ocean.”
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