A floating device sent to corral a swirling island of trash between California and Hawaii has not swept up any plastic waste—but the young innovator behind the project said Monday that a fix was in the works.
Boyan Slat, 24, who launched the Pacific Ocean cleanup project, said the speed of the solar-powered barrier isn't allowing it to hold on to the plastic it catches.
"Sometimes the system actually moves slightly slower than the plastic, which of course you don't want because then you have a chance of losing the plastic again," Slat said in an interview with The Associated Press.
A crew of engineers will reach the U-shaped boom Tuesday and will work for the next few weeks to widen its span so that it catches more wind and waves to help it go faster, he said.
The plastic barrier with a tapered 10-foot-deep (3-meter-deep) screen is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in the patch while allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it.
They should try hiring dolphins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:39AM
Someone should have experimented at home first. Fill a bathtub, then dump in some neutrally bouyant thingies. Try catching them. It isn't easy. This plastic doesn't all float at the surface, nor is there any reason to think that it all floats within 10, or 20, or even 50 feet of the surface. Sure, every bit helps, but there are probably more bits that you can't see, than you can see.