|
|
Theme | NATURE
Under the surface
|
|
|
Even though the oceans are making up for this much of the earth’s surface, a lot is still to be discovered about them. Only recently scientist discovered a phenomenon called ocean acidity, a chemical process in which absorbed CO2 reacts with seawater and produces acid. To further research the effects, several Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment experiments have started like this one from the EU.
|
|
|
A more visible pollution of the ocean is plastic waste. Island-size quantities float around impacting the marine life in various ways. A young man dedicated his life to cleaning up this mess and got an almost impossible plan working.
|
|
Theme | GADGETS
Watch out
|
|
|
But what to do with all that plastic? The mission of Awake Watches is to prove that there is a smarter and more sustainable way to consume goods, with no compromise on design and quality. With that in mind, they make beautiful watches from waste plastic from the ocean.
|
|
|
Overfishing is another problem. With the ever-growing number of people to feed, a lot of fish is needed. Traditional nets cause damage and catch fish that the particular fisherman is not looking for. The Precision Seafood Harvesting programme from New Zealand came up with a completely new design of a fishing net that only catches the right fish of the right size. They have called it Tiaki, Māori for to guard, keep, look after, care for, protect, conserve and save.
|
|
|
Changing nets means even more unused fishing nets than there already are. Another pollution the ocean can do very well without. That is exactly what the people of the Bureo agency thought. So they came up with a way to collect, clean and recycle discarded fishing nets and turn them into products like skateboards and sunglasses.
|
|
Theme | NATURE
Raise the bar
|
|
|
Instead of catching fish in open water, maybe raising them would be a better solution. In the past, farmed fish had a bad reputation because of the use of large quantities of antibiotics and the fact that these fish needed other fish to feed on. Kingfish Zeeland solved this problem and is now raising a high-quality yellowtail fish on land without the use of antibiotics and fed with organic food.
|
|
|
After cleaning up the plastic waste, fixing the acidity and starting fishing responsibly (or not at all), the ocean could recover. Probably by itself, but innovation can help to do it a little faster. For instance with the artificial reefs from ARC Marine.
|
|
|
|
|
|