The sea has been used as the global sewer for centuries and it’s now a sad fact that there is more plastic in the ocean than plankton.  We are near a critical mass situation in many ways.  Scientists estimate that around the world, up to one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die each year from eating plastic.  Approximatly 300,000 Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) die in entanglements annually.  But we can turn it around.

         

Every time we go to the beach, every time we go out on the boat, every time we dive into the ocean, we come back with some sort of man-made debris.

In Hawaii, by weight and volume the bulk of the rubbish pulled off remote beaches and off the bottom of the ocean is fishing or marine transportation related.  Nets, ropes, monofilament line, buoys, weights, plastic bits of debris.  Lost or abandoned fishing nets also known as “Ghost Nets” are floating curtains of death to fish, marine mammals and birds.  By count, the bulk of the debris is land based, mostly made up of recyclable beverage containers and plastic bags, which are found on beaches, floating near-shore, many miles off-shore and on the ocean bottom.  Small bits of plastic are mistakenly consumed by fish, birds and other marine life and past up the food chain.  Plastic does not bio-degrade.  It merely breaks down to smaller pieces of itself and is consumed by the inhabitants of the sea and past up the food chain to you and me.


This is what a beach should look like.  This is one of our adopted beach's on the island of Lanai.

What can you do?  1) Start using reusable shopping bags.  Americans use and throw away 100 billion plastic bags every year. 2) Filter your own drinking water and fill a drink container to take with you. This will eliminate plastic water bottles.  These are the two quickest and easiest ways to cut down on plastic waste.

Help us in our effort to remove man-made debris from 1,000 square miles of ocean and miles of beach by donating to our efforts.  Or, come to Maui and help us as Crew Members to eradicate marine debris in the ocean and on remote beach's.  Nothing happens without your support.