"What is the Yellow Thing?" I hear you asking. Essentially it's a catamaran with a very fine net strewn between its two hulls. The device is stable in the water, allowing us to easily sample the surface of the ocean. To keep it clear of the ship, it's towed from a long boom mounted to the port side. The readiness of the superb team of engineers to construct this led to my suspicion that I was inadvertently falling foul of some dastardly plan - under the guise of science - to build some sort of 'ducking stool 'to aid the 'cleansing' of us poor innocent pollywogs during our admission into Neptune's aquatic kingdom. Out here, on the ocean, there's time to exhaust all possible lines of thought! Though I can not reveal the exact means by which Neptune cleansed us of the smut of the land (the word "cleansed" is, to say the least, a euphemistic term for the horrors afflicted upon us). I can safely say that we were not subjected to the same 15th­17th century treatment as women suspected of witchcraft in Britain.

So why are we using the Yellow Thing? As we are all aware, plastic is a ubiquitous substance in our society. While very useful, plastic is often considered a disposable commodity. Then the very property that made it so useful, its chemical inertia, results in a longevity completely out of proportion with its useful life.

Doesn't it seem absurd that perishable goods with a shelf life of weeks, if not days, are wrapped in a material that will potentially still exist in hundreds of years? The combination of ubiquity, short useful life and lack of degradation pathways means that through negligence and accident a considerable amount of plastic ends up entering the oceans.

Here it causes a number of problems; birds and fish eat it. at best potentially causing, a permanent feeling of satiation - leading to starvation. Other problems include the phenomena of ghost nets, the possible accumulation of environmental pollutants upon plastic debris, entanglement and the hitchhiking of alien species around the globe on board plastic rafts. Our plan is to use the marine debris sampler to help the global scientific community get a handle on the density of plastic particles in the oceans.

Where will the Yellow Thing be taking a dip? The plan is to use the sampler during the rest of the year. The Esperanza is travelling through a variety of waters - from near enclosed seas surrounded by populous areas, like the Mediterranean - to the vast Pacific Ocean. The information we gather will be published and put in the public domain to contribute to the body of information relating to this disturbing problem. Hopefully, this inform debate on how we can tackle, or at least arrest the proliferation of this problem.

Long live the Yellow Thing

Oh dear I think this whole 72-metre long world thing is getting to me.

- Adam

The Trash Vortex »
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©Greenpeace/Gleizes

Adam, looking rather pleased
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