Kaisei Crew / Current Lines

24 August 2010 Tuesday
Latitude 32 degrees 49 minutes North
Longitude 144 degrees 20 minutes West

We very pleased to have George Schneider on board as engineer for this voyage. George is a 4th year student at the California Maritime Academy. George is energetic, skillful and does quality work. He assisted us with preparing the vessel for the voyage. All of us find him a helpful shipmate, always ready to lend a hand with a smile. He not only is an extremely qualified at engineering, but he is also curious and eager to help by going aloft to set sails, and offers assistance with garbage collections.

Last year our engineer was also a 4th year student at the California Maritime Academy, Cathy Reinhart, another admirable shipmate and a fine engineer. Ocean Voyages Institute, with the goal of preservation of the maritime arts and sciences, as well as the ocean environment, very much values our relationship with CMA and thinks very highly of their curriculum and cadets. The late Captain David Belden Lyman was a valued Board member of Ocean Voyages Institute, an illustrious alumnae of the California Maritime Academy, and one of Mary Crowley’s closest and most valued friends.

We are extremely honored to have Joe Lacey join us as Chief Engineer. He is a graduate of King’s Point Academy and a member of Marine Engineer’s Beneficial Association. After his years of professional seafaring on a variety of vessels including ferries, container ships and other steam and motor vessels, we appreciate his intelligence and his great competence as an engineer. As a professional merchant seaman, he enhances our voyage with his expertise and teaching ability. Ocean Voyages Institute greatly believes in the education offered by the fine maritime academies throughout the country and the world.

Another person who has made extremely important contributions to our voyage is Janine Oros Amon, who spent several months helping with voyage logistics and preparations. Juanita, as she is also known, is a long time close friend of Mary Crowley’s and combines a passion for sailing and concern for the marine environment with skills in business and project management. Juanita has logged thousands of miles of global blue water sailing, but, until now, has never known the joys of climbing in a Tall Ship’s rig on a long voyage. In her early professional life, Juanita was a nurse, and is also serving on board as KAISEI’S Medical Officer, taking good care of the crew with everything from splinters to tonsillitis. She is a talented addition to any ship’s compliment, and plans to help PK/OVI as our work continues in years to come.

Today is a windless day with calm seas. We are in the North Pacific High Pressure area and in excellent conditions for spotting and collecting marine debris. For our debris logging system we put in a description of each object that is sighted that is an inch or larger, noting color, shape, type and latitude and longitude. For the many pieces under an inch, we just keep track of numbers and today we had over 5,000 of these small inch long or less size pieces. When you consider that we are just one ship with a fairly small range of vision, you can extrapolate how much plastic is in our ocean.

Today we also saw current lines one of which was marked by a stream of mainly white plastic pieces, roughly one to three inches in diameter (it was like a small river flowing with broken down white plastic pieces) and this stream had a heavier concentration of the more broken down plastic pieces known as confetti. Our collections today include more bottles of all shapes and sizes, as well as larger containers. These plastics look to have been in the ocean for quite some time as they are worn and weathered.

“On board KAISEI, mid-ocean, we have all become quite accustomed to our life and watches centering on counting debris. This has become our normal daily routine. When one steps back and realizes how extraordinary it is to be so far from land and yet surrounded by the spoils of our society, it strengthens our commitment to create change in governmental policies, corporate sustainability practices and individual’s actions.”

JOINT QUOTE
Nick Mallos, Ocean Conservancy
Mary Crowley, Ocean Voyages Institute