Day 2: First Waste removal

The rafts are loaded with Big Bags, each weighing an average of 100 kg. They are so heavy that we struggle to roll them down towards the rafts. Once loaded, the makeshift barge can be towed by a single person despite the three Big Bags it supports. The process is tiring but works very well! We tackle the hundreds of buoys that were also left on the beach in 2019. The connecting links are replaced, and we tow dozens of meters of the string along the reef, taking great care to avoid the corals. The parrotfish, curious, come to get a close look at our commotion. If they have never seen a human before, we hope to leave them with a good memory by helping them reclaim the area without a trace of human pollution.

At noon, the lunch break allows us to set up the afternoon action plan: extract the waste gathered at the passage point in the reef marked with a buoy. The surf and the current are very powerful there, and the risk of capsizing is high. At 1 p.m., Simon, Ludwig, and Alexandre equip themselves with masks, snorkels, and fins to secure the transfer and prevent the line connecting the shore to the outside of the reef from getting stuck at the bottom and damaging the coral. We attempt the first maneuver with three bags loaded with waste. We tow the platform with the help of the Zodiac from the open sea, and after a few waves that keep us on alert, the loading is secured in the calm and deep zone of the shore. It’s a success! We high-five, shout with joy! The passage is inaugurated, and soon we start the back-and-forths. The downstream logistics are also long and complex: the Zodiac tows the platform to the Plastic Odyssey ship, which receives it and crane-lifts the Big Bags one by one onto the deck. We prioritize loading the hard plastic that we can recycle directly on board. The deck is soon covered! These wastes that haunted the island are now a precious resource for our workshop. They will come out of our ship in the form of boards, benches, and profiles that can be installed in nearby islands in need. These wastes have immeasurable value: they symbolize overflowing pollution that the ocean spits out on the most isolated beaches on the planet. They signify an overflow of our ecosystems by waste. But they also prove that solutions are possible: an ‘impossible cleanup’ made possible by the deployment of small-scale recycling solutions. Our ship is the demonstrator, and the technologies it uses deserve to be replicated worldwide. The content we are fortunate to create: videos, photos, written narratives, will, we hope, inspire a change in the mindset of many and reduce plastic consumption at its source.

We are moving fast and effectively. But after two days of relentless collection, we have so far only recovered the plastic collected in 2019. Since then, the beach has been covered with new waste: we are undertaking a counting protocol to measure the concentration and origin of these new items. These data will be very useful to feed into the research program we have planned with Hanna, a half-Dutch, half-American scientist specializing in plastics.

In the evening, we find our camp invaded by about fifty hermit crabs exploring our coconut bowls and wooden spoons, attempting to climb the suspended food nets. Marseille soap is a sensation: they tear open our waterproof bags to find it. At night, they come to monitor our sleep very closely, in dozens, waking us up with the discreet noise of the grass they traverse. On this paradise island, yet endangered, the climate is ideal at night: neither too hot nor too cold. No mosquitoes, no snakes, only rats that, for now, avoid us. Since our arrival and after the passage of the heavy depression that delayed our departure, we have not had any rain. All elements seem to align to assist us in the accomplishment of our titanic task. Tomorrow, we will continue to gather the tons of waste that invade the shore in Big Bags, and we will be able to start extracting the 100 meters of buoy garland that we have assembled!