Halkiopi”: A marine drone in the… “battle” for the cleaning of Thermaikos
The marine drone has the ability to collect up to 160 liters of trash per voyage
“Halkiope” is a marine unmanned floating waste collection vessel. It was bought on behalf of the municipality of Thessaloniki from the Netherlands. It is the first time that it is tested in Greece and more specifically it will sail in the waters of the Thermaikos Gulf.
The marine drone it has the ability to collect up to 160 liters of garbage per trip, which ends up in a special built-in removable bin. It will be handled from the shore at the points where the largest amount of waste is concentrated on the seafront of Thessaloniki, such as the port, the White Tower, the Sailing Club and the Kellarios ‘Ormos.
The first tests in the waters of Thermaikos for “Halkiopi” have already started and will continue until next summer in order to assess the efficiency or any weaknesses so that it can be improved, while it will work in addition to the already existing vessel that cleans the sea area at regular intervals by other agencies.
At noon, another waste collection test took place in the presence of the mayor of Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Zervasof the vice-mayor of the Environment, Erotokritos Theotokatos, but also of private companies that contributed to the operation of the marine drone at the height of the Sailing Club.
“Thermaikos gulf got a shark, a garbage shark. We are very happy that in the effort to keep Thermaikos clean we have another tool in our hands. It is very important that the municipality of Thessaloniki has a high-tech product, a drone that we can use to collect floating pollutants. “The more weapons we have in this effort, the more optimistic I will be that our city will become more attractive and more beautiful,” said Mr. Zervas.
Mr. Theotokatos, for his part, underlined that “the sea is the sensitive part of the environment, it is the mirror of our city and we must protect it”.
“Halkiopi” is expected to operate additionally initially once a week, mainly when there is a severe problem on the beach, while at the same time actions will be taken to raise awareness among citizens to protect the sea from plastic waste.
Also included in the pilot actions is the study of placing traps (nets) in two selected stormwater drains, in order to investigate the possibility of their use, with the aim of reducing the floating materials that end up in the sea in cases of heavy rainfall.
Aquatic trash boat scooping up marine debris all summer long
To the best of scientists’ knowledge, there is no version of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Great Lakes, but that doesn’t mean everyone is waiting until a huge trash vortex accumulates to address marine debris.
“People see the big pictures in the ocean, the big gyres of garbage, but they don’t realize that there’s 22,000 pounds of plastics that are put into the Great Lakes every year,” said Greg Kleinheinz, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh professor of environmental engineering technology who also chairs the department and is the Viessmann Chair of Sustainable Technology. “It’s an emerging and significant issue.”
Kleinheinz’s statistic came from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which inventories and tracks high concentrations of plastic in the Great Lakes. The institute estimates that the equivalent of approximately 100 Olympic-sized pools full of plastic bottles is dumped annually into Lake Michigan alone.
Garbage that pollutes U.S. rivers, lakes, streams and creeks is considered “aquatic trash” by the Environmental Protection Agency. That aquatic trash becomes “marine debris” once it reaches the ocean or the Great Lakes. Marine debris, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is defined as “any persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and [is] directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, disposed of or abandoned into the marine environment or the Great Lakes. Anything human-made and solid can become marine debris once lost or littered in these aquatic environments.”
(From left) Nicole Cochems, a UW-Eau Claire geology major, with Sara Pabich, a Door County resident who graduated this year from UW-Madison. In the foreground is Greg Kleinheinz, a UW-Oshkosh professor of environmental engineering technology. Photo by Rachel Lukas.
Plastic waste is particularly concerning because it’s used widely and never really goes away. Instead, sun exposure, waves and temperature changes break the plastics down into smaller and smaller pieces until they become “microplastics” of about 5 millimeters or smaller. (There are about 25 millimeters in an inch.)
Microplastics remain in the water or wash up on land and are very difficult to remove. Aquatic organisms eat microplastics and the chemicals they carry, and in that way, plastics make their way up the food chain.
“Finding plastic particles is one thing,” Kleinheinz said. “What kind of health effects do they have on fish or macroinvertebrates, which relates to sport fishing? People don’t understand all that.”
First Trash Boat in Wisconsin, First Trash Drone in U.S.
Understanding requires research, and research requires people gathering data in the field and in the lab.
Meet Nicole Cochems, a UW-Eau Claire geology major who’s entering her third year, and Sara Pabich, a Door County resident who graduated this year from UW-Madison with a degree in economics and environmental studies.
The two, along with Kleinheinz, launched a pontoon-style boat off Sawyer Park in Sturgeon Bay one early-July morning. They are two of seven students hired this year to work for UW-Oshkosh out of a rented home in Baileys Harbor. They and the other students – UW-Stout, UW-Oshkosh and Michigan Tech are also represented – were selected from four times as many applicants.
“It’s probably the most popular program we run,” Kleinheinz said. “They make a little money to help fund their education; they get to be in a great place [where] most people don’t have an opportunity to live; and they get to learn both field and laboratory skills in some area that’s related to whatever their career path is.”
Their primary role is working with Wisconsin’s Beach Monitoring Program. Throughout the summer, they test beach-water samples from 32 of Door County’s 54 beaches for E. coli, a bacterium that indicates the presence of pathogens that can cause illness. If E. coli levels are high enough, they issue beach-water advisories or closures.
The marine drone used on the trash boat is the first of its kind in the United States. Photo by Rachel Lukas.
Nicole Cochems remotely pilots the marine drone in tighter areas. Photo by Rachel Lukas.
Kleinheinz has been running the program since 2003 and usually pairs it with another research project. His groups have tackled beach economics, beach remediation and beach microbial source identification, to list a few.
“In this case, this year, we have a trash boat,” Kleinheinz said.
“Marine debris boat,” Pabich corrected.
The Marine Debris Mitigation Project boat is pontoon-style craft with a 50-horsepower Mercury motor that tops out at 5 mph. A large basket installed below deck scoops up all it encounters. Since May and through Labor Day, the students will collect aquatic trash weekly from four locations: the bay of Sturgeon Bay, the mouth of the Fox River in Green Bay, in Algoma/Kewaunee and in Manitowoc.
A marine drone docked on deck is swung into the water to navigate remotely around boats in the closer quarters of marinas using a tablet-like device. It, too, is equipped with a basket and has a range of up to 1,200 feet from the boat’s operator.
The students also collect water samples that are filtered in the lab to determine the quantities and types of microplastics that are present.
After a day on the water, they return to Crossroads at Big Creek, where they dock the boat and empty the basket contents. Some of the most commonly found forms of plastics in Great Lakes waters include plastic pieces, cigarettes and filters, foam pieces, plastic bottles and caps, food wrappers and straws.
“This is kind of the worst scenario because we’re cleaning up what’s already in the water,” Kleinheinz said. “It would be better to prevent what’s going in there.”
To do that, they also identify and characterize what they’re finding.
“Then we can hopefully start an education campaign to prevent that,” Kleinheinz said.
Nicole Cochems leaves Sturgeon Bay’s west side behind as she captains the Marine Debris Mitigation Project boat in the bay of Sturgeon Bay. Photo by Rachel Lukas.
Once, they found a tire. Mostly they find pop bottles. Sometimes, the catch is only seaweed and dead alewives.
“We don’t want to see trash, but I was thinking there was going to be tons and tons of trash in there,” Cochems said. “I was not expecting to see as little as we’ve found.”
They’d been collecting debris for only a few weeks at that time, however. As the water and beach activities of the summer continued, they were expecting more.
“It would be exciting if we found a big pile of trash floating around, and we could scoop it all up, but on the other hand, that would be pretty depressing,” Kleinheinz said. “It’s good news for the community and the water that we’re not seeing big piles.”
The marine debris boat, funded through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Trash Free Waters Program, is Wisconsin’s first. And this is the first research group in the country to get the marine drone.
“A lot of times you’ll see trash boats in places like Chicago and Baltimore – really big metropolitan areas,” Kleinheinz said. “But when you look at the number of marinas, for example, in Sturgeon Bay and Door County, it’s pretty significant.”
At the end of the summer, the researchers will have a good set of data to work with.
“I think Door County is lucky that UW-Oshkosh has funding to do stuff like this in Door County,” Pabich said. “Once we get a better understanding of where the trash is, we can start those educational campaigns.”
“This is just one more aspect of how we can keep resources here clean – because it’s vital,” Kleinheinz added. “Not only to the society and culture of the county, but the economics of it as well.”
The WasteShark eats up trash in waterways like a Roomba
There’s something in the water. It swims through waterways alone devouring whatever it comes across. This shark doesn’t bite, though, and it actually resembles a Roomba more than a great white. It’s called a WasteShark, and it’s swimming and “eating” for a great cause.
Instead of fish, the WasteShark eats what it can of the huge amount of plastic that ends up in our waterways every day.
The WasteShark was created by Dutch company RanMarine and first launched in the canals of the Netherlands in 2017. WasteSharks are now being used in 12 countries in a variety of waterways, including marinas, ports, canals, harbors, rivers, lakes, and wherever else they are needed.
RanMarine found inspiration for the design of their WasteShark in the body of the world’s biggest shark, the whale shark.
Whale sharks swim around with their giant mouths open, sucking up food and filtering out water. The WasteShark does the same, and can collect up to a ton of waste a day. When it “eats” its fill, the WasteShark returns to its docking location to empty its load before going back out in the water to collect more.
RanMarine has partnered with theme parks like DisneyWorld and Universal Studios to keep their water features clean, and has also partnered with waterfront cities across the world including Houston, Texas, and Cape Coral, Florida.
Seeing as the majority of the plastic ever made still exists as-is and an estimated 1 million plastic bottles enter the ocean every minute, the WasteShark has its job cut out for it. It’s propelled by electric motors and can swim for 10 hours before needing to charge –– without creating any emissions!
The WasteShark, which can swim autonomously or be driven remotely, can also pick up biomass –– an overgrowth of aquatic plants and algae. This overgrowth is the result of chemical runoff from farming that makes the plant life in the water grow at an unnatural rate. Biomass can reduce oxygen for fish and other species and add toxins to the water in addition to making it smell pretty bad and look unappealing.
Clean water is important for all of us. While a Roomba certainly serves a purpose, its water cousin the WasteShark is at the forefront of robots helping people to make the world better for every species who live on it, whether in water or on land.
WasteShark: River Trash Traps Chew at Huge Ocean Plastics Problem
WasteShark, a drone cum trash trap may be the answer to solving the ocean plastic problems. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
How do river trash traps help eliminate ocean plastic?
WasteShark is a boxy, 5-foot 2-inch-long aquatic drone cleaning up plastic waste in a pond in Rotterdam, maybe a solution to clean plastic waste in the water. Known as the WasteShark, the device is an aqua drone that removes plastic and debris floating on water surfaces. According to RanMarine Technology, the drone is capable of holding 42 gallons of trash and other floating debris. It can also mop up plants and algae floating on water and operate for eight hours after a single charge.
“So we wanted it to be as easy to deploy as possible, as easy to capture the trash and bring it back to land, make it safer so that the operator is stood on the shore rather than was in the water, make it battery operated, so it was zero emissions, not diesel or fossil fuel-powered. And it was easy to store away,” said Richard Hardiman, the CEO, and founder of RanMarine.“A lot of the time our customers have bigger boats that need a captain and a lot of maintenance and a lot of mechanical movement to make them work. We wanted something very sleek, very simple, get the trash out and start recycling faster than what has been done right now,” he added.
More on the WasteShark
The concept inspired by the whale shark, the majestic creature that swims with its mouth open is revolutionary. “The WasteShark was based on the whale shark, which has a large mouth for capturing its prey. So that’s why we have two pontoons, one on each side. So that the waste can come in from the front. And it gets trapped in between the pontoons,” explained Tessa Despinic. Despinic is the design engineer of the miraculous product. According to the developers, they were successful in selling over 40 aquatic drones. With the price starting from $25,600, the basic model comes with a manually controlled option. Higher-end models are programmable.
This is one of the many techniques present for reducing the plastic waste problem . As trash is washed away, thrown, or blown into waterways, storm drains close up or carry them forward.“ Once plastic or trash ends up in the ocean, it’s very hard to collect because it does break down. And so it gets smaller and smaller and it’s just hard to get out to our big open oceans and collect the trash there. We’d much rather collect that trash closer to shore, which is easier, it’s less costly,” stated Nancy Wallace. Wallace is the director of the Marine Debris Program under the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
“The most important thing with marine debris or plastic or trash in our ocean is we don’t want it there in the first place. So while all of these devices are incredibly helpful, we need to work on the upstream solutions of generating less waste from the consumer standpoint, but also the industry standpoint. And so there’s a lot of different players that are going to help solve this problem overall,” added Wallace. Ocean life is declining due to rising temperatures, plastic debris, and human interference. This waste trapper is possible a way to help them.
A New Hero In The Battle Against Ocean Pollution: The WasteShark
As a child growing up in the Florida Keys I can remember swimming in our canal and discovering the wildlife surrounding me. Triggerfish, seahorses, needlefish, horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, barracuda, you name it. In the canal walls, we would spot lobster and an occasional octopus. It was a great introduction to ocean life.
When we moved away, I still had those wonderful memories in my head, and I had definitely gotten “sand in my shoes”. When we traveled back to the Keys to sell our house in the early 1990s, I went swimming in the canal once again, but it was a distinctly different experience. The water was murky and there was no life to be found, besides a few sad looking minnows. Gone were all the fascinating creatures. All of this happened in the span of less than ten years.
These days, I have found my way back to the Florida Keys. I spend my free time introducing my children to the wonders of the ocean. We are out on the water whenever humanly possible. Our favorite thing to do is to kayak out to a little island and check out all the wildlife surrounding us. But, though it is beautiful and full of life, we always find plenty of plastic to bring home with us. It’s safe to say we are full-blown plastic patrol ocean guardians.
In just this small slice of the ocean where we live, we try to make whatever difference we can in the quality of the waters surrounding us. If it’s plastic, or any type of garbage, it is coming home with us to be properly disposed of. But we are just one family, and every year, eight million tons of toxic plastic leak into our oceans. What if there was a product that could remove the plastic on a much larger scale? Well, there is!
In this time of the 2021 Climate Change Conference (COP26), when global elites jet-set to Europe and attend their soirees and talk of making change in the world, it is just that — only talk. One company is bypassing the private jets and Champagne galas and actually doing something about the plastic in our oceans and waterways. Richard Hardiman, founder and CEO of RanMarine Technology, a Netherlands based USV (Unmanned Surface Vessels) company, has developed a water-borne drone that harvests plastic waste from the world’s ports, harbors, rivers and marinas in an effort to reduce the effects of plastic pollution on the Earth’s oceans. It is called the WasteShark.
The WasteShark has been exported globally to the USA, UAE, UK, Australia and South Africa. Added to the WasteShark’s ability to collect waste, RanMarine has now also pioneered the collection of live data from water-borne drones, to measure water health quality. With 180 liters (47.5 gallons) of capacity and an eight hour runtime, this hardworking robot can remove 500kg (1100lb) of waste a day. The WasteShark is also easy to use and deploy. Using 4G onboard communications and an easy setup process, launching multiple drones has been made deliberately simple and easy for customers. Additionally, the drone uses advanced battery technology ensuring emission-free operation on the water, and not adding to the water’s pollution. This makes the WasteShark one of the solutions leading the way in the fight against plastic.
The WasteShark can work both manually, operated with a remote, and fully autonomously. The autonomous WasteShark can detect when its battery is low and when its basket is full. It will then return to its docking station, or SharkPod. The WasteShark is equipped for collision avoidance, and is perfect for canals, ports and along waterlines where plastics inevitably meet the ocean. Currently there is one size available, and is not made for open-ocean navigation, but RanMarine is working on a larger WasteShark that can be used for this purpose.
RanMarine will be receiving the innovation award for the WasteShark and will also introduce the SharkPod, the world’s first autonomous floating docking station for waste-clearing drones, at CES 2022 in Las Vegas January 5–8. With the ability to deploy, dock and charge up to five WasteShark drones at any time, this latest tool in pollution-fighting technology will enable ports, harbors and cities to operate a twenty-four hour autonomous solution to remove floating waste from the water. With the ability to remove one ton of waste per drone per day, RanMarine expects the SharkPod to be capable of removing up to one hundred tons or more of debris and waste per month. With the prototype unit that will be deployed in 2022, drones will be able to dock, discharge waste, recharge and redeploy on a continuous twenty-four hour basis, all from a centrally controlled online environment.
Solutions to the global water pollution crisis gather steam
Bubble walls, robotic sharks and sunglasses made from sea plastic. These are just some of the inventive solutions being advanced to stem the deluge of plastic spewing into the world’s waterways.
With marine habitats at the brink of collapse and micro-plastics devastating food chains and threatening human health, the UN Environment Programme estimates around 11 million tonnes of plastic waste is flowing each year into the ocean, a figure it says could triple by 2040.
Earlier this month the world’s first global plastic pollution treaty was endorsed by world leaders at the UN Environment Assembly in an attempt to reverse this growing emergency (see box below).
As the world waits for this global treaty to turn the tide against plastics, we look at some of the innovators already working hard on solutions to clean up the oceans.
The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup has been busily cleaning the world’s waterways for a few years now with the bold ambition to clean up 90% of floating ocean plastic pollution. To this end, the non-profit foundation has been scaling up its ocean-faring vessels and plastic-capturing technology, and is also deploying smaller solar-powered Interceptor vessels suited to pick up pollution at its source from highly polluted rivers. With the plastics reclaimed from the ocean it created a line of sunglasses to raise funds for future cleanups.
source: The Ocean Cleanup
The SeaCleaners
The SeaCleaners is a French marine researcher and educator that is in the process of building a large vessel called Manta, a factory ship with the capacity to extract floating plastic as well as smaller pieces of debris up to a metre deep which it then processes onboard to power the craft. The organisation is currently running a small fleet of smaller vessels called Mobulas. These vessels collect plastic pollution in the calmer waters of harbours and lakes.
source: The SeaCleaners
The Great Bubble Barrier
The Great Bubble Barrier created its bubble screen technology to capture plastic pollution across the entire width and depth of rivers without restricting the movement of vessels or disrupting fish and other marine life. The first bubble barriers have completed pilot testing with a fully operational bubble barrier now established in Amsterdam to protect the North Sea from plastic pollution. The Dutch social enterprise plans to implement more bubble barriers in Europe this year before heading to the most polluted rivers in South East Asia.
source: The Great Bubble Barrier
WasteShark
Roaming rivers and lakes is a 1.5-metre aquatic vacuum cleaner called WasteShark. Developed by RanMarine, the autonomous surface vessel (ASV) can collect up to 500kg of garbage and surface scum in a single outing lasting up to 6 hours and over 5km. It provides waterway operators with a zero-emission solution for removing floating pollution such as plastics, algae and biomass from lakes, waterways and harbours.
source: WasteShark
The Seabin Project
The Seabin is a floating garbage bin that sits on the water’s surface within harbours and marinas gathering garbage, oil, fuel and detergents. Developed by Australian boatbuilders, Seabins have been deployed across 50 countries worldwide to reduce plastic pollution. The Seabin Project says it aims to use education, science, technology and community action to further its goals of providing the knowledge, tools and capabilities to the decision-makers of the future.
source: The Seabin Project
The Global Treaty explained:
On March 2nd representatives from 175 nations endorsed a historic resolution at the UN Environment Assembly to end plastic pollution and forge an international legally binding agreement by the end of 2024.
The treaty seeks to reverse what the UN Environment Assembly describes as an “epidemic” with a legally-binding international agreement that addresses the full lifecycle of plastics, including production, design and disposal.
Espen Barth Eide, assembly president and Norwegian Minister for Climate and the Environment, said of the treaty: “Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic. With today’s resolution we are officially on track for a cure.”
Read the full announcement here.
WWF: Plastic in oceans quadrupled by 2050, major consequences for nature
By 2050, plastic waste in the oceans will have quadrupled, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) writes in a new report on Tuesday. Vulnerable nature such as coral reefs and mangrove forests will be particularly affected by this.
According to the WWF, plastic production is expected to double by 2040 compared to today. Some of that plastic eventually ends up in the oceans. This will have major consequences for animals and ecosystems.
More than 2,000 animal species are already experiencing the effects of plastic in their living environment, according to the report. An estimated 90 percent of seabirds and 52 percent of sea turtles have already ingested plastic, the WWF writes. This may involve microplastics in the stomach, plastic waste around the neck and plasticizers in the blood.
The conservation organization warns that the threshold values for microplastic concentrations will be exceeded by the end of this century. This is already the case in the Mediterranean Sea, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Arctic Ocean.
“All studies show that plastic waste in the oceans is an irreversible process. If we don’t act quickly, the consequences of plastic pollution will be incalculable,” says Oskar de Roos, plastics expert at WWF.
Hundreds of major companies and civil society organizations have now joined a WWF petition for a global UN convention against plastic pollution.
A task force appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling for research and investment in mitigation. Environmentalists say the real fix is cracking down on polluters.
Thousands of dead fish float in the Boca Ciega Bay located near the mouth of Madeira Beach on July 21, 2021 in Madeira Beach, Florida. Credit: Octavio Jones/Getty Images
A task force appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to address the state’s algal bloom crisis concluded in a recent report that “without hard work and careful planning” adverse human health impacts and widespread wildlife mortality would most likely “worsen” because of climate change and the state’s growing population.
The blooms are caused by high concentrations of a plant-like microscopic organism known as Karenia brevis fed by nutrients in runoff from stormwater, agricultural lands and wastewater treatment plants. A key stimulant is phosphorus from fertilizer used on farms and ranches in the Kissimmee River Basin, which forms the headwaters of the Everglades and drains into Lake Okeechobee, which in turn reaches the coasts through rivers and man-made canals.
The algal blooms, which at one point in 2018 covered 90 percent of the lake’s surface, can have devastating impacts on ecological resources and communities, causing respiratory and eye irritation in humans and “widespread reports of fish, sea turtle, marine mammal, and other wildlife mortalities,” according to the Florida Harmful Algal Bloom Task Force.
Released on Jan. 10, the task force’s report recommends more research to determine the causes of red tides, more investment in mitigation technologies and continued work under the Clean Waterways Act of 2020.
What the task force described as a “prolonged 2017-2019 red tide event” began with an algal bloom on Lake Okeechobee and resulted in “estimated total losses of nearly $1 billion in revenue and an additional loss of $178 million in tax revenue in 23 Gulf coast counties.”
The impacts of climate change, which the task force said “may be impossible to change,” contribute to the algal blooms “through a complex variety of mechanisms including warmer water temperatures, changes in salinity, changes in rainfall patterns… changes in coastal upwelling, and sea level rise.”
Our planet is drowning in plastic pollution it’s time for change!
Last reviewed
November 2021
Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year for use in a wide variety of applications.
At least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year, and plastic makes up 80% of all marine debris found from surface waters to deep-sea sediments.
Marine species ingest or are entangled by plastic debris, which causes severe injuries and death.
Plastic pollution threatens food safety and quality, human health, coastal tourism, and contributes to climate change.
There is an urgent need to explore new and existing legally binding agreements to address marine plastic pollution.
Plastic is a synthetic organic polymer made from petroleum with properties ideally suited for a wide variety of applications including: packaging, building and construction, household and sports equipment, vehicles, electronics and agriculture. Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year, half of which is used to create single-use items such as shopping bags, cups and straws. If discarded improperly, plastic waste can harm the environment and biodiversity.
At least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year. Plastic debris is currently the most abundant type of litter in the ocean, making up 80% of all marine debrisfound from surface waters to deep-sea sediments. Plastic is found on the shorelines of every continent, with more plastic waste found near popular tourist destinations and densely populated areas.
A scientific research mission supported by UNESCO has discovered one of the largest coral reefs in the world off the coast of Tahiti. The pristine condition of, and extensive area covered by, the rose-shaped corals make this a highly valuable discovery.
” To date, we know the surface of the moon better than the deep ocean. Only 20% of the entire seabed has been mapped. This remarkable discovery in Tahiti demonstrates the incredible work of scientists who, with the support of UNESCO, further the extent of our knowledge about what lies beneath. ” Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General
Highly unusual discovery
The reef is located at depths of between 30 and 65 metres. It is approximately 3km in length and between 30m and 60/65m wide, which makes it one of the most extensive healthy coral reefs on record. The giant rose-shaped corals are up to 2 metres in diameter.
This is highly unusual because, up to now, the vast majority of the world’s known coral reefs sit at depths of up to 25m. So this discovery suggests that there are many more large reefs out there, at depths of more than 30 metres, in what is known as the ocean’s ‘twilight zone’, which we simply do not know about.
” It was magical to witness giant, beautiful rose corals which stretch for as far as the eye can see. It was like a work of art.” Alexis Rosenfeld, French photographer and founder of the 1 Ocean campaign
A step forward for science
This expedition is part of UNESCO’s global approach to mapping the ocean. Coral reefs are an important food source for other organisms so locating them can aid research around biodiversity. The organisms that live on reefs can be important for medicinal research and reefs can also provide protection from coastal erosion and even tsunamis.
“French Polynesia suffered a significant bleaching event back in 2019 however this reef does not appear to have been significantly affected. The discovery of this reef in such a pristine condition is good news and can inspire future conservation. We think that deeper reefs may be better protected from global warming.” Dr. Laetitia Hedouin, France’s National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS)
