58 In the north Pacific sits a patch of debris covering about 1.6 million sq km and containing up to 130,000 t of marine and plastic debris. Known as the Great Pacific Garbage patch, it is estimated to have grown tenfold each decade since 1945. It is ecological damage on this scale that is spurring new approaches to cleaning up our oceans, ones that use AI and autonomy. The patch is a prime example of the damage we have done to the environment, but research indicates that more than 75% of ocean litter is actually in shallower waters, within about 1000 m of the shoreline and particularly in more populated areas. Collecting this waste is hard enough, although we have detailed a few successful autonomous solutions from OEMs for tackling this challenge, such as NXInnovation (issue 48, February/ March 2023) and RanMarine (issue 11, December 2016/January 2017). However, collecting litter that sinks to the seabed, where it can stick in the sand and be difficult to see and therefore collect, is a task on another level of difficulty. Present clean-up efforts are few and far between, and are largely carried out by volunteer divers, who are limited in how many hours they can give and how much they can remove from the seafloor. Professional divers can be contracted for heavier lifting work and longer hours, but they are strictly regulated and command high prices. Autonomy though offers a path towards cost-effective, high-throughput cleaning of the shallows and presents no Rory Jackson reports on this new USV that cut its teeth on a project to clear inshore waters of our garbage The EU-funded SeaClear project has seen Subsea Tech’s SeaCAT deployed as mothership to a team of ROVs and UAVs for collecting sunken litter near shorelines (Images courtesy of Subsea Tech) October/November 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology
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