Race for Water capsizes in Indian: “No plastic” mission at risk?
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The MOD70 trimaran Race for Water capsized 90 miles southeast of the Chagos Islands (the archipelago located in the Indian Ocean south of the Maldives Islands and northeast of Mauritius), after 32 miles traveled. Everyone on board is fine, thankfully: including Swiss-Italian entrepreneur Marco Simeoni, the leader of the Race for Water Odyssey expedition : a tour of the world’s seas to collect data on oceanic plastic pollution. Along with him are Stève Ravussin, Claude Thélier, Martin Gavériaux and Olivier Rouvillois. The shore team is working to recover the boat and crew (as we are writing this, rescue operations are underway and all is going well, with the crew boarding the ship Pacific Marlin).
THE MISSION OF RACE FOR WATER
Simeoni and partners departed on March 15 from the port of Bordeaux, France. The Race for Water Odyssey project plans to reach the five “garbage islands” (the most famous being the Pacific Trash Vortex, located in the equatorial calm zone of the Pacific Ocean halfway between Hawaii and the coast of North America) created by the accumulation of plastic dumped into the world’s seas. Aboard a fast MOD70 Marco Simeoni made stopovers in the Azores and Bermuda, then New York: crossed the Panama Canal to move to Valparaiso, Chile, then Easter Island. From there the crew proceeded to Hawaii, the Mariana Islands and Guam, landing first in Tokyo and then in Shanghai, finally in Koror before capsizing off the Chagos. There is still some way to go, some plastic to catalog: the next stops, if the journey can resume smoothly, will be Rodrigues, Tristan da Cunha, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Verde. This is not the first time we have dealt with the plastic problem (remember Plastiki?), and we hope it will not be the last either!
SEAS AT RISK
“The really scary thing about these plastic islands,” the Swiss man had explained to TGCOM24,“is that we found millions of plastic microparticles on the beaches and concentrated in eddies that kill millions of animals.” Due to ultraviolet rays, plastic breaks down into microscopic, intangible fragments similar to plankton particles, which fish and seabirds mistake for food. The result? An entire ecosystem ruined by the equivalent of fifty years of uncontrolled disposal. www.raceforwater.com
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