The level of plastic pollution in our oceans is rising. This plastic gets trapped in the 5 ocean gyres - huge currents that swirl round our seas. One is the North Atlantic gyre which is now home to the North Atlantic Garbage patch.
We want to try and do something about this before the plastic becomes smaller and smaller and an even greater danger to marine wildlife. With the funds raised, we would like to purchase a second hand ship, customise it so it can collect as much of this plastic debris as possible.
In 1997 Captain Charles J Moore discovered huge areas of floating plastic whilst sailing in the north Pacific. This is now known as the Great Pacific garbage patch which is in an area called a gyre.
There are 5 gyres in the world's oceans and these are huge areas of seawater circulating due to wind and currents that collect anything that is floating - some of the plastic found in these gyres has stayed there for 6 years.
We primarily want to focus our clean up efforts on the North Atlantic garbage patch which is an area hundreds of kilometres wide and contains approximately 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometre.
The other areas we hope to visit are large river mouths to catch the plastics before it spreads into the oceans. In the Northern Hemisphere the Nile and the Niger are reported to be 2 of the 10 most polluting rivers.
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Plasticseize is run by a small team of trustees from Hampshire, UK. The founder is Peter Moore, a retired police officer who has been a passionate sailor from the age of 14, who wanted to do something practical in the worldwide war on plastic pollution.
In the Plasticseize family we have people with experience from multinational business, law, accountancy, marketing and sales as well as the shipping industry. We shall need help as we grow - follow our exciting story and perhaps you have skills you can bring to the team.
Plasticseize talks to Tony Curphey
We are always fascinated to hear about people's experiences with plastic pollution in our oceans. In our first video interview, we talk with Tony Curphey who has sailed solo around the world on several occasions.
This video focuses on the plastic pollution he has seen.
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You can also watch the full interview in which we talk to him about his experiences at sea, battling bad weather and his life onboard his Nicholson 32 yacht.
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