Week 12 The ocean clean up (oops deleted! but retrieved)

My heroes are people who seem to have a build in drive for fixing the larger problems in this world. Those people are not hollywood stars, and while they can have money they don't seem to be motivated by it. They are often super smart and...daring.

Elon Musk is one. Recently another person has been Boyan Slat [it seems there may be something in having a slightly strange name]. Boyan is 19 years old and wants to clean the oceans of plastic - you know those giant garbage patches clogging up our aquatic ecosystems.

Boyan went scuba diving in Greece a few years ago and found more plastic bags than fish. It bothered him, but unlike everyone else he decided to do something about it. Instead of the ship with nets idea he thought building a stationary structure and letting the ocean move through it (since the major oceans have gyres - that is they move in a giant circular motion) this could collect the plastic - then a belt would lift the plastic out. Well it is a little bit more complicated than that but that is the general idea.

He postponed his engineering studies to work on this, crowd funding to work on the feasibility study with a large group helping him. Now the study is done, it is feasible. Now into phase II, another round of crowdfunding which is my contribution this week.

"To reduce the uncertainties, to optimize the design and to prepare for the actual implementation, The Ocean Cleanup now commences on the second phase of the project: the pilot phase.
Through a series of up-scaled tests, The Ocean Cleanup will work towards a large-scale and fully operational pilot in 3-4 years’ time. The series of tests will generate new data in a range of structural and physical topics. Furthermore, these up-scaling tests will serve as a platform for the engineering and oceanographic research groups, enabling them to immediately implement newly developed technology or testing equipment in a real-life environment"

https://fund.theoceancleanup.com