Message In A Bottle

General

Dr Markus Erickson and Joel Pashal from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation are sailing to Hawaii with a raft constructed from trash. This sailable raft is made from a 1961 Cessna airplane, tied to sailboat masts with plastic bag rope, and 15000 pet bottles in fishing-nets that make it float. ‘We were looking for something that was lightweight and could stand the banging of the Ocean.’

Students from three high schools helped with the construction of the raft, they made rope from plastic bags and cleaned the PET-bottles.

With this action the men want to call attention to plastic soup which is now floating in the Pacific Ocean (this problem is featured in an earlier article on Superuse: The Garbage Continent http://www.superuse.org/story.php?title=Garbage-Continent )

Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Dr Markus Erickson and Joel Pashal.

Junk (2008), sailable raft

Cessna 310 (1961), 15000 pet bottles, fishing-nets, sailboat masts, plastic bags.

Long Beach, California (01/06 ‘08 – 27/08 ’08) – Hawaii, USA

Epilogue (added in September):

On 27th of August the Junk reached Hawaii: http://trekme.com/junk/trek-262-junk-across-the-pacific

2,600 miles of open ocean crossed in 87 days. The Junk-crew sailed through four hurricanes. During their travel they managed to collect 10 ocean surface samples using our marine debris trawl, further they snatched a few large pieces of plastic debris that floated under the raft and caught fish with stomachs filled with particles of plastic: ‘Plastic is forever, and it’s everywhere.’

Junk-raft: http://junkraft.blogspot.com/

KNBC: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ6ZHII0aKs&feature=related

Algalita Marine Research Foundation: http://www.algalita.org/message-in-a-bottle.html

YouTube blog: http://www.youtube.com/user/annarubiecita

Wanna build your own floating trash device and save the world? This summer in Italia: I Rifiuti Galla – http://www.superuse.org/story.php?title=I-Rifiuti-Galla or http://acciaroli08.blogspot.com/