2000 foot long Ocean Cleanup Net launched

[kelemvor]

I saw this on a few news sites today.

Ocean Cleanup steams out to sea in test run to clean Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The ungainly watercraft starts out as a long line of linked floating booms – 2,000 feet of them – towed out from the dockyard where it's been built in Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco. It motors under the Golden Gate Bridge and out to a testing area about 275 miles off the coast of California.

This odd vessel looks like a cross between an oil rig and a floating swimming pool and may help clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Once in place, the Ocean Cleanup, dubbed System 001, is deployed. The passive system’s floating series of connected booms naturally form into a broad U-shape. Below the booms, a 9-foot skirt gently corrals the plastic trash that contaminates our seas.

The cleanup system is supposed to work like this: After the boom detaches from the towing vessel, the current is expected to pull it into the shape of a “U.” As it drifts along, propelled by the wind and waves, it should trap plastic “like Pac-Man,” the foundation said on its website. The captured plastic would then be transported back to land, sorted and recycled.

The boom has an impenetrable skirt that hangs nearly 10 feet below to catch smaller pieces of plastic. The nonprofit said marine life would be able to pass underneath.

Does anyone know any more about it? It sounds like a terrible idea to me, basically a deliberately launched ghost net? Maybe I'm not understanding something, but usually fish don't just "swim under" nets...they get trapped and die in nets.

I hope I'm simply not understanding something special about it.

 

[kmarks]

Because humans can't ever fix a problem without creating a bigger one, this is probably going to turn into a disaster. A hurricane will hit and turn the clean up system into it's own pile of floating garbage or it'll become self aware and re-form itself around LA to trap the garbage there. Maybe it's not all bad.

However, it's not a net. It's more like a giant floating pool noodle with a sheet of plastic hanging underneath it. The water doesn't flow through a net or anything that can trap fish or anything else under the surface. The water will end up flowing underneath the plastic skirt, carrying wildlife with it. Trawling nets work because the water can flow through, but the fish can't, so the constant pressure of the water keeps them in it.

Anything floating on the surface will be trapped in the pool noodle part of it and concentrated for easier clean up.

 

[tbone1004]

@kelemvor @kmarks hit it on the head. The key here is to think of this like the floating pool noodles they use to contain oil slicks. Since the plastic they're trying to contain is floating they just need something that goes a foot or two deep and is a few feet tall but can easily be solid vs. a net.