One of the first has been deployed in 2003 with the vacuum-vessel from Ecocéane company, capable of collecting to 100 cubic meters of hydrocarbons per hour, which had already convinced 26 countries. Although it is the only one on the market for the moment, things are in safe hands and new prototypes of all kind are coming up.
Boyan Slat has designed a device, which uses solid floating barriers instead of nets and can sail against the current thanks to solar power. The inventor assures that the Ocean Cleanup could clear plastic waste from the planet in five years. With a similar operating, the Protei, the sailboat of Cesar Harada, which moves through the water like an eel, is also a strange but amazingly effective boat.
With Elie Ahovi and Erik Borg’s submarine drones, science is beyond fiction. While the first vessel is conceived to suck up every waste on its way before bringing them to the mother ship, the second is a withdrawal base for its four mobile vacuum cleaners.
Strange boats or sea robots, within a few years, those machines will probably sail across the Blue Planet.
Translated by S. Muller – Meretdemeures.com (July 2014).
