Tall Ship Kaisei Departs Sausalito en Route to Pacific "Sea of Plastic"

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Tall Ship Kaisei Departs Sausalito en Route to Pacific “Sea of Plastic”

The sailing ship Kaisei stopped in Sausalito today en route to a section of the Pacific near Hawaii where a slowly-rotating mass of floating plastic has been gathered by the world’s ocean currents into a permanent floating scar on the face of the planet.

Project Kaisei teams scientists, environmentalists, sailors, and ocean enthusiasts to study the North Pacific Gyre — that rotating mass of plastic — to determine how to capture the debris and to study how retrieval and processing methods could be used to recycle these materials into diesel fuel. This is their first mission, and they’ll be testing technologies that have never been utilized under oceanic conditions.

Sausalito photographer Sabine Stetson captured these images of the Kaisei at anchor in Sausalito this morning (August 4).

The Plastic Vortex, an ocean gyre, is situated approximately five days by boat from San Francisco, and lies northeast of Hawaii. The Kaisei will sail through the Vortex to collect and study plastic and other debris.

One of the most fascinating parts of the project is that we can all follow the ship’s progress and see photos and video from the voyage through a special website you can access online. We even got to see the visit to Sausalito from the Kaisei’s point of view! You’ll need to install Google Earth to see the global map, which the site will install for you if you accept the option when it’s offered.

The Kaisei is owned by the Sausalito- based Ocean Voyages Institute. The image at right, from the Port of San Diego, shows the Kaisei under sail at a recent event.