The holiday season is here! Although I am enchanted by the pretty lights decorating the ships in the harbor, this time of year is notorious for its waste. Household waste increases between 25-30% between Thanksgiving and New Years, and a large portion of it is plastic. Whatever happened to “Peace on Earth and good will toward manatees?”
The Ocean Cleanup project, headed by 24-year-old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, has spent the last 5 years designing a U-shaped floating trawl to scour the sea for floating bits of plastic. The 600-meter long floater and attached skirt are designed to work passively with natural elements like currents and wind to follow the plastic’s path and trap it. The skirt creates a downward flow where fish and other wildlife can safely pass underneath it.
Maybe our last article about plastic in the ocean scared you a bit, but now that you know what’s going on, it’s time to get motivated. The good news is that little changes in our day-to-day lives can have a big collective impact on reducing the plastic flowing into the ocean, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to form new habits. Here are some single-use plastic items you can easily swap out with reusable products so you’re not adding to the problem.
ASA has brought on Marine Conservationist, Lauren Coiro, to help with advocacy and education when it comes to how sailors interact with the environment that they call home. “Ask Lauren” will be a regular feature where our questions on the environment will be asked and answered. Do you have a question? Ask Lauren!
I don’t need to waste a sailor’s time by telling you there’s plastic in the ocean. If you’re out on the water, you’ve seen it by now. Some places are cleaner than others, and in some parts of the world it has reached an extreme that is truly surreal: As we’ve mentioned before, this is not an “ocean problem.” This is a “people problem.” So how did we get here, what’s the real level of the damage, and what do we do about it?
Join Lauren on her adventure as she embarks on a journey to learn to sail. Follow her as she gets her feet wet as a beginner, gains experience, and earns her ASA certifications with Santa Barbara Sailing Center. The ultimate goal is to complete ASA 104 and go bareboat chartering somewhere exotic. ASA 101.5 – Eight Things I Learned in ASA 101 I am proud to announce that I am officially ASA certified in Basic Keelboat Sailing! Now that I have completed the 101 course and am a seasoned expert of all things nautical, I wanted to share my biggest …
Join Lauren on her adventure as she embarks on a journey to learn to sail with Santa Barbara Sailing Center. Follow her as she gets her feet wet as a beginner, gains experience, and earns her ASA certifications. The ultimate goal is to complete ASA 104 and go bareboat chartering somewhere exotic. ASA 101, Part 4 – ASA 101 Exam Day Last night I spent a solid couple of hours with the books and with my own shoelace. It’s relaxing to practice tying knots in front of the TV. I’m not much of a “gamer” but I downloaded the Sailing …
In the 1980s, a small group of volunteers in Texas rallied their community together to take a day to clean up their coastal area. They organized a team and trekked a couple miles of beach to remove a few bags of trash from the shoreline. Thirty years later, over 100 countries will be participating in an effort now known as International Coastal Cleanup Day (part of World Cleanup Day).
