The Race for Water project is fighting marine pollution by traveling the world for five years aboard one of the world’s largest solar ships. This trimaran anchored last April in the French port of Lorient and now, after crossing the Atlantic, is in the Bermuda Islands, where three scientists from the European project Ephemare, coordinated by the University of Vigo and whose aim is to assess the impact of microplastics on marine organisms, have embarked. One of these experts is the researcher from the Ecotox group Raimundo Blanco, who has been collecting and processing samples in Whalebone Bay, Well Bay and Evans Bay since Wednesday 28. After six days of work on board, this Tuesday the members of the Ephemare team moved to the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) to continue with the laboratory analyses.
Working hand in hand with Race for Water
Race for Water is an initiative focused on both the dissemination and scientific study of the impact that plastic waste has on the planet’s seas. According to estimates by Marco Simeone, the Swiss businessman who launched this project, there is already 1 kg of plastic for every five fish in the oceans, from bottles and bags to small plastic particles derived mainly from personal care products, such as soaps, cosmetics and toothpaste, or from larger products that degrade into small fragments. This problem is also the focus of the work of the European project Ephemare, which, under the coordination of professor Ricardo Beiras from Vigo, brings together scientists from 15 institutions in ten European countries who are working to study pollution by microplastics, waste less than 5 mm in size, and their effects on aquatic species, both invertebrates and fish.
The possibility of establishing this collaboration between both projects allowed the three Ephemare scientists to embark on the solar trimaran in Marina Carolina Bay last Wednesday. During the six days of navigation along the coast of Bermuda, they carried out the necessary tasks to extract the microplastics needed for their subsequent study. As Raimundo Blanco details, “the microplastic samples will be quantified, analyzed and used to carry out ecotoxicity tests in Europe, in the laboratories of the University of Bordeaux (France), Antwerp (Belgium), Polytechnic of La Marche (Italy), Vigo and Coruña”.
The researcher from Vigo highly values the opportunity that Ephemare has for participating in the Race for Water. “From a scientific point of view, it allows access to a sampling platform in an altruistic way in an area of great interest to obtain the necessary samples for the study of the effect of microplastics on marine animals, both invertebrates and fish. From a dissemination point of view, it means giving visibility to scientific work and allowing society to know about it by taking advantage of the media channels available to R4W”. Finally, Blanco recalls, it is important to “collaborate with the public involved in the problem of plastics in the environment to search for lines of research and collaboration (citizen science)” and adds that this project also represents an opportunity to establish collaborations with researchers from the Bermuda Islands themselves.
Six days aboard the solar trimaran off the coast of Bermuda
Two locations in Bermuda were selected to collect the samples, one on the east coast (Well Bay) and the other on the west (Somerset Long Bay). At these points, the researchers collected sand samples on the beach, sediments at a depth of ten meters, several species of invertebrates (mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms) and vertebrates (fish), as well as water samples in the open sea. Blanco details that the field work is divided into matrices and for the water matrix they took samples of the surface layer of the water column (the first 20 cm), for which they used a Manta Trawl that is dragged at three knots of speed for 15 or 30 minutes. For the beach sampling, they collected around 22 liters of sand that will be processed to extract the microplastics. Finally, for the collection of sediments and echinoderms, “as there are coral reefs where we work, it was decided to collect them by diving”.
In parallel with the scientific activities, Race for Water organized a workshop in which they participated, together with the scientists of Ephemare, representatives of several institutions such as the Curator for Natural History Museum at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo, the Bermuda Marine Debris Taskforce and non-profit organizations such as Keep Bermuda Beautiful and Bermuda Marine Debris Taskforce (BMDT). After passing through Bermuda, the Race for Water project will continue its work of research, prevention and dissemination by traveling through the waters of the entire planet until April 2021. The next stop will be the North Pacific and Asia, with the view that this scientific and ecological mission will have a special presence at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020, just as they did at the America’s Cup sailing, which took place in Bermuda in 2017.
The ship, an energetically clean floating laboratory
The Race for Water expedition ship is a trimaran 35 meters long, 23 meters wide and 6.3 meters high, which maintains an average speed of 5 knots and reaches a maximum of 9. It uses clean energy by combining solar energy captured by a 500 m2 solar panel surface, hydrogen and wind. When sailing, the energy produced by the solar panels is used for propulsion and to store the unused energy for the night, for which it has four lithium batteries that release 754 KWh. In the event that production is greater than necessary, for example when docked, the unused energy is used to produce hydrogen by electrolysis of seawater and stored in hydrogen bottles, which are used to produce electrical energy for propulsion or to refill the batteries. In addition, in favorable conditions, a 20 m2 kite is deployed that allows it to reach a speed of up to 10 knots. This type of propulsion allows for silent navigation and does not produce emissions into the environment that could interfere with the scientific work being carried out, work for which they have a wet and a dry laboratory.
Source DUVI
