Depending on the season, the waste will go to different places: “With the monsoon cycle in Indonesia, there are reversals of currents and winds”, Marc continues: “We have thus highlighted that different areas were impacted by the waste, depending on the season. At a certain time of year, it tends to go towards the Timor Sea, to the east, and at another time towards the Indian Ocean: we have a beacon released from a river in Java that went all the way to Madagascar! In 6 months it has travelled almost 7,500 km, a clear and visible illustration that plastic pollution is not a local problem but a global one.”
UNUD and The SeaCleaners will jointly deploy 10 buoys in the mouths and rivers of Bali. One in the Ijo Gading River on the west coast and the other in the Ayung River on the southeast coast. The researchers from Udayana University are therefore planning to assess, among other things, the speed at which waste is likely to reach the sea and where it is likely to go next.
These buoys will support UNUD and The SeaCleaners in their efforts to combat marine plastic pollution by providing valuable information. Indeed, knowing where and why marine debris accumulates in certain areas is fundamental to increasing and optimising the effectiveness of ships and waste collection campaigns.
In addition, 15 days a month, UNUD students will board the MOBULA 8 to carry out a detailed characterisation of the macroplastics collected in specific areas.
Gwenaële Coat, Scientific Director of The SeaCleaners, is delighted with this cooperation: “Fighting plastic pollution effectively involves curative action, preventive action and also an in-depth scientific understanding of the phenomena that contribute to plastic pollution in aquatic environments. MOBULA 8 combines these three dimensions and we are very pleased that its deployment is part of such important research programmes as those of CLS and the local university of Udayana. Collaborations such as these, with local actors, contribute to a better understanding of the systems and are essential”.
* Representation of an object or phenomenon in a digital format.