After more than a month out on the Pacific Ocean, a Bay Area-based nonprofit organization returned home this week with 96 tons of trash.
The group, Ocean Voyages Institute, pulled the debris from an area that's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
"It’s actually this huge area and it's filled with lots of derelict fishing nets and it's filled with lots of consumer debris," Ocean Voyages Institute founder and president Mary Crowley said.
Ocean Voyages Institute has spent the past 14 years focusing on solutions to the issue of plastics accumulating in oceans. On Wednesday, the group shared video and pictures from the crew's latest 45-day cleanup mission in the Pacific.
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"It really is restoring ocean habitat because without us removing this, a tremendous amount of ocean life gets either killed because they’re entangled in the debris or they consume and eat the debris which doesn’t digest in their stomach," Crowley said.
Capt. Locky MacLane said they used grappling hooks, large steel claws and other methods to try to capture the debris. It was a mission that got more challenging by the day.
"Much of the consumer waste has broken into smaller pieces, however we still see brands, coolers, beer crates, laundry baskets," he said.
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The group said the recovered plastic will now be repurposed or recycled.
"Our thing is picking products that last so they will never get back in the ocean again," Crowley said.
The group is gearing up to head back out again soon.
