A file photo of divers taking part in cleaning the seabed off the coastal city of Batroun, north of Beirut. Researchers hope the large-scale views taken in by satellites and drones offer improved ways of ‘observing and tracking floating plastics, and we hope our work here will eventually support active clean-up operations’. — AFP
For as long as there has been plastic garbage it’s managed to find its way into the ocean, but never quite like it did a couple of years ago off the Greek island of Lesbos. There, a team of people collected a small dump’s worth of plastic bottles, bags, and fishing nets, assembled it on platforms, and floated them (temporarily) out to sea.
The plastic barges were an experiment to see whether they’d be picked up by satellites and high-flying drones. The results, used in research published today in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, showed that satellites could pick up the agglomerations of plastic bobbing at sea. Using artificial intelligence, researchers were also able to discern trash from from natural materials like seaweed, wood, and even sea foam.
Limited time offer:
Just RM5 per month.
