Sunday May 31, Los Angeles
Aquarium Harbor Long Beach, California
The Algolita, also names the JUNK boat, a two person catamaran floating on pontoons made from recycled water bottles set sail across the Pacific en route to Hawaii at about 3:00pm.
Crew members Joel Pascal and Marcus Eriksen left the harbor on their hand made boat towed out by the larger research catamaran also named "Algalita."
Floating on fifteen thousand empty recycled water bottles that they salvaged from the dump, the two will attempt reach the Hawaiian Islands using prevailing currents and sail power once the boat is towed past the last of the Channel Islands, St Nicolas.
At the dump they had to sort through mountains of single use plastic water bottle to find thicker bottles with lids with washers. These were then wrapped in used fish nets and used as pontoons. 95% of the waste bottle could net be used.
The goal of their voyage is to bring attention to the millions of tons of plastics that are dumped into our environment and up in huge permanent cesspools of floating plastic, like the mid Pacific gyre.
To follow the 6 week journey go to
http://junkraft.blogspot.com and to find out more info about the research try
Http://www.algalita.org Lee Maidoff
