Tag: ocean

50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

The Ocean Cleanup , a Dutch foundation that aims to deal with plastics polluting our seas, says it’s finally ready to put its technology to work. In a statement released today, the organization has revealed that it plans to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in early 2018 using its newly redesigned cleaning system. That garbage patch is the biggest collection of debris in the ocean, a massive soup of visible and microscopic plastic particles poisoning marine life. The ship captain who discovered it in 2003 said he “never found a clear spot” in the week it took to cross the region. While Boyan Slat (the organization’s founder) originally envisioned trapping plastic trash with one large screen tethered to the ocean floor, the new design is smaller, sturdier and can save the group a ton of money. Instead of deploying a 60-mile stationary screen, they plan on releasing 50 smaller ones that measure 0.6 miles in length. They’ll weigh the floating screens down with anchor, so they can move with the currents like plastics do, albeit a bit slower in order to trap debris. Slat told FastCompany that he expected the original design to clean up half of the massive garbage patch in 10 years for $320 million. Now, he expects the new design to cut that timespan in half and to cost the group significantly less than that amount. Since he and his team still need to fund the project, though, they plan to use the plastic they collect to make items they can sell, such as sunglasses, chairs and car bumpers. Source: The Ocean Cleanup

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50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

The Ocean Cleanup , a Dutch foundation that aims to deal with plastics polluting our seas, says it’s finally ready to put its technology to work. In a statement released today, the organization has revealed that it plans to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in early 2018 using its newly redesigned cleaning system. That garbage patch is the biggest collection of debris in the ocean, a massive soup of visible and microscopic plastic particles poisoning marine life. The ship captain who discovered it in 2003 said he “never found a clear spot” in the week it took to cross the region. While Boyan Slat (the organization’s founder) originally envisioned trapping plastic trash with one large screen tethered to the ocean floor, the new design is smaller, sturdier and can save the group a ton of money. Instead of deploying a 60-mile stationary screen, they plan on releasing 50 smaller ones that measure 0.6 miles in length. They’ll weigh the floating screens down with anchor, so they can move with the currents like plastics do, albeit a bit slower in order to trap debris. Slat told FastCompany that he expected the original design to clean up half of the massive garbage patch in 10 years for $320 million. Now, he expects the new design to cut that timespan in half and to cost the group significantly less than that amount. Since he and his team still need to fund the project, though, they plan to use the plastic they collect to make items they can sell, such as sunglasses, chairs and car bumpers. Source: The Ocean Cleanup

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50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

The Ocean Cleanup , a Dutch foundation that aims to deal with plastics polluting our seas, says it’s finally ready to put its technology to work. In a statement released today, the organization has revealed that it plans to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in early 2018 using its newly redesigned cleaning system. That garbage patch is the biggest collection of debris in the ocean, a massive soup of visible and microscopic plastic particles poisoning marine life. The ship captain who discovered it in 2003 said he “never found a clear spot” in the week it took to cross the region. While Boyan Slat (the organization’s founder) originally envisioned trapping plastic trash with one large screen tethered to the ocean floor, the new design is smaller, sturdier and can save the group a ton of money. Instead of deploying a 60-mile stationary screen, they plan on releasing 50 smaller ones that measure 0.6 miles in length. They’ll weigh the floating screens down with anchor, so they can move with the currents like plastics do, albeit a bit slower in order to trap debris. Slat told FastCompany that he expected the original design to clean up half of the massive garbage patch in 10 years for $320 million. Now, he expects the new design to cut that timespan in half and to cost the group significantly less than that amount. Since he and his team still need to fund the project, though, they plan to use the plastic they collect to make items they can sell, such as sunglasses, chairs and car bumpers. Source: The Ocean Cleanup

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50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

The Ocean Cleanup , a Dutch foundation that aims to deal with plastics polluting our seas, says it’s finally ready to put its technology to work. In a statement released today, the organization has revealed that it plans to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in early 2018 using its newly redesigned cleaning system. That garbage patch is the biggest collection of debris in the ocean, a massive soup of visible and microscopic plastic particles poisoning marine life. The ship captain who discovered it in 2003 said he “never found a clear spot” in the week it took to cross the region. While Boyan Slat (the organization’s founder) originally envisioned trapping plastic trash with one large screen tethered to the ocean floor, the new design is smaller, sturdier and can save the group a ton of money. Instead of deploying a 60-mile stationary screen, they plan on releasing 50 smaller ones that measure 0.6 miles in length. They’ll weigh the floating screens down with anchor, so they can move with the currents like plastics do, albeit a bit slower in order to trap debris. Slat told FastCompany that he expected the original design to clean up half of the massive garbage patch in 10 years for $320 million. Now, he expects the new design to cut that timespan in half and to cost the group significantly less than that amount. Since he and his team still need to fund the project, though, they plan to use the plastic they collect to make items they can sell, such as sunglasses, chairs and car bumpers. Source: The Ocean Cleanup

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50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year

Amazon is now managing its own ocean freight

Amazon has been working for a while now to build out its shipping and distribution network. Now the online retailer has started coordinating its own shipments from Chinese merchants to its warehouses in the US via ocean freighters. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company doesn’t own any ships, but it’s working as a freight forwarder and logistics provider. These are the companies that reserve space on freighters and handle trucking shipments from port to a warehouse. WSJ says that Amazon has coordinated shipment of 150 containers from China since October. News of Amazon’s intent to get into shipping freight across the ocean first broke last year when the company gained approval from the Federal Maritime Commission to act as a Ocean Transportation Intermediary. During the 2015 holiday season, the retailer bought extra trailers to beef up its shipping capacity at the busiest time of the year. Earlier in 2015, Amazon began leasing planes for the so-called Prime Air that gave it more control over shipping logistics here in the US. Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Amazon is now managing its own ocean freight

Circular Wave Pools for Research—and Maybe Olympic Surfing

Last year Edinburgh University got a new pool. But it wasn’t for the co-eds to take dips in; the circular 30-meter tank is ringed with 168 controllable paddles, enabling the precise creation of waves, choppy sea patterns, and even waterspouts. Check out the craziness: The tank calls the  FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility  its home, and it can mimic a variety of ocean conditions. An overhead crane can drop scale models of seagoing vessels into the pool, allowing researchers to see how it behaves in say, an Atlantic swell, or if it is struck by a (scaled) 28-meter wave. And in addition to the paddles, there are submerged “flow-drive units” that can create current beneath the surface. Working in concert, the systems provide “unrivalled control and repeatability, ” allowing developers of watercraft and submersibles to refine their designs based on real-world testing. To be able to create repeatable waves is vital for testing seacraft. But the same type of science may also be valuable for a very different kind of “testing;” the athletic trials of the Olympics. As adventure sports website The Inertia points out: In the past, surfing has been the red-headed step child of the Olympics because of the obvious reasons: contestable surf in many of the locations set for Games just isn’t there…. But with the advances in wave pool technology snowballing in the last few years, there is a very real possibility of surfing becoming something else entirely: an Olympic sport held outside the ocean in waves that are exactly the same every time–which is exactly what is needed for surfing to be properly judged. If Olympic surfing happens, the organization supplying the waves will probably be Webber Wave Pools . Illustration by Paul Roget Illustration by Paul Roget The company’s donut-shaped design allows for constantly-breaking waves that circle the tank endlessly. Illustration by Paul Roget Illustration by Paul Roget Illustration by Paul Roget And the wave generators of course offer precise control. Working in concert, they can deliver “a stunning 2, 500 waves per hour, ” the company says, and they reckon that will be the key to making the pools profitable: Only with a massive wave rate can huge numbers of surfers be fulfilled. Graduate the wave shape and size from the softest easiest beginner waves to the most demanding piping barrels, and you will not just fulfil thousand of surfers but you will totally stoke that same number.

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Circular Wave Pools for Research—and Maybe Olympic Surfing

These pygmy seahorses are so good at changing colors for camouflage

Pygmy seahorses are super tiny creatures that have the awesome ability to camouflage. They attach themselves to colorful corals and blend in so seamlessly that I have a hard time picking them out. What’s cool is that even if the pygmy seahorses are descendants of orange seahorses, they can adapt and become purple if that’s the only coral nearby. Read more…

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These pygmy seahorses are so good at changing colors for camouflage

$10 million yacht tips over on its maiden voyage

Well, that’s not supposed to happen. Not when you spend 10 million dollars on a 90-foot yacht. Not when that $10 million 90-foot yacht is embarking on its maiden voyage. Not when a boat, let a lone a $10 million 90-foot yacht, is never supposed to tip over sideways. Read more…

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$10 million yacht tips over on its maiden voyage

Watch a large ship getting deformed from the inside in a heavy storm

On the left, a ship in a heavy storm as seen from the deck, going through giant waves. On the right, a ship in a heavy storm seen from a level deep inside, going through the same stress forces. I really don’t know which perspective is scarier. Read more…        

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Watch a large ship getting deformed from the inside in a heavy storm