Today’s oceans contain roughly 25 million tons of plastic waste, and approximately 94% of marine litter is located on the seafloor. Every year, 150,000-500,000 tonnes of macroplastics and 70,000-130,000 tonnes of microplastics enter European seas. This issue affects all seas around Europe, including e.g. the North Sea and the Black Sea; however, the majority of the debris ends up in the Mediterranean Sea. This semi-enclosed sea, surrounded by three continents and characterized by intense human activity, works as a trap for litter and has become one of the most affected seas by marine litter worldwide – so much, that aside from the five giant garbage masses in the world’s oceans (2 in the Atlantic, 2 in the Pacific and 1 in the Indian ocean), the Mediterranean is considered the sixth greatest accumulation of marine litter.
SeaClear2.0 will develop a holistic approach to address the full cycle of marine litter in a way that will help meet the Mission Ocean objectives to restore, protect and preserve the health of our oceans, seas and waters by 2030, in the context of the Mediterranean sea basin lighthouse. To this end, we aim to prevent and reduce marine litter pollution, particularly plastics and microplastics, in the Mediterranean via:
(i) Community activation, citizen empowerment, and participatory practices for identifying site-specific measures for marine litter prevention and reduction;
(ii) Scaling up and demonstrating the SeaClear2.0 system, an innovative solution with teams of autonomous, intelligent robots for effective monitoring and collection of marine seafloor and surface litter;
(iii) Providing solutions for the valorization of the collected marine litter through better sorting and recycling;
(iv) Adding novel dimensions in policy making by providing evidence for new legislation and the implementation of existing regulation to achieve Good Environmental Status, and
(v) Accelerating the uptake of our solution by demonstrating its scalability and replicability to the Mediterranean basin and beyond in 3 full-scale demonstrations, 3 pilot tests, and at least 5 associated-region projects funded via the financial support scheme for third parties.
The SeaClear2.0 system comprises a team of autonomous and heterogeneous robots engineered and trained to work collaboratively for in-situ mapping, detection, classification, and collection of marine litter from the seafloor and sea surface. Capable of operating at depths of up to 100 metres and lifting items weighing up to 250 kilograms, SeaClear2.0’s pioneering technological solutions represent a paradigm shift in ocean restoration.
