Airtime For Expedition
In line with this year’s SMM theme ‘protecting resources and the environment’ Marlink, provider of maritime satellite communications, announces its support Project Kaisei’s second expedition. The project has been created to seek viable solutions to the growing problems associated with marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre, which can then be developed for all oceans of the world.
Marlink will provide the airtime for the project, which will allow it to communicate its findings through the Internet via Marlink’s WaveCall(TM) VSAT service. WaveCall(TM) will be using Ku-band which will facilitate voice and Internet broadband even in the remote areas that Project Kaisei will operate. Tore Morten Olsen, CEO, Marlink was keen to point out the importance of the mission, ” It is vital that we support and encourage projects such as Kaisei in the important research needed to make the world’s shipping lanes safer and ecologically viable for the shipping operators, their crews and passengers. All of whom are ultimately our customers.”
For the last two years, the Ocean Voyages Institute has conducted expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre as part of its ocean cleanup initiative. They explain that the Gyre is a remote and inaccessible area created by four major ocean currents and spas much of the Pacific, between California and Asia, and that this area, once a healthy oceanic ecosystem, is now home to a large concentration of toxic plastic proliferation.