UK-based company eXXpedition has headed off from New Zealand's waters to better understand where plastic pollution that ends up in the ocean comes from — and put a stop to it.
The expedition trips sought to collect data from remote waters beginning in Auckland before heading up to Great Barrier, Tonga and eventually Antarctica to sample plastics found at sea and map their sources on land.
Mission leader Rowan Henthorn said New Zealand piqued their interest as a country to conduct research in.
"You have Great Barrier Island which actually forms essentially like a big net in allowing all of the waste that's become littered to go out of the Auckland Hauraki gulf and onto the Bay of Island," she said.
The all-female research teams spend their time cleaning up the beach as well as trawling the ocean for plastics, and unpacking what had been found.
"Is it foam? Hard fragments? Pellets? Fishing line? And then we're also going to use something called Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) on it to look at what type of polymer it is," said research lead Taylor Maddalene.
The aim was to trace the rubbish back to its source, looking at what was available in shops, restaurants and waste management infrastructure with the hope to work with local groups to find solutions and inform policy.
Henthorn was part of major change in the Isle of Man after visiting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Global company Exxpedition takes data from remote waters to map the sources and scale of plastic pollution. (Source: 1News)
"I worked in policy to introduce some of the first single-use legislation banning 10 unnecessary single-use plastic items, so it's amazing to be back out here and doing this work knowing the potential impact that it can have," she said.
Otago university graduate Rāwinia Wikaira is also the first Kiwi to come aboard the expedition, after winning the eXXpedition bursary for a māori graduate.
"We'll be going through the rohe of Ngāti Wai, which is where I whakapapa to so it's a very unique and amazing experience," she explained.
"I'll be able to travel where my ancestors would regularly travel."
Wikaira was eager to get a clearer idea of Aotearoa's plastic problem.
"I feel like we aren't taking it seriously, if I'm going to be honest, [and] microplastics, they're everywhere."
The information gathered on the voyage would be uploaded to an open source data base.
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