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Robot Jellyfish Show Promise for Ocean Cleanup

Posted on May 30, 2023 by dishanth

Where are we Now?

Many different negative outcomes have been observed due to reckless disregard for our environment and ecosystems. The main focus in the environmental movement has been on GHGs, reasonably so, as carbon accumulation in the atmosphere poses the largest existential risk for our species and all other animals on our planet.

However, plastic pollution and pollution, in general, have been and continue to be a large risk for many animals and living things across the globe, this fact being amplified in the ocean. Marine ecosystems are delicate; many plants and animals depend on specific conditions to survive and thrive.

As such, cleaning up our oceans and other marine ecosystems is paramount. While numerous technologies have been developed to combat plastic pollution in our water, many of them have their own risks associated with them.

Some machines are too loud, driving animals away from their natural habitats. At the same time, others are too damaging in their efforts to clean up pollution, destroying delicate plants and animals while clearing away plastic.

However, a new technology developed by scientists out of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems may be able to solve these problems with minimal impact of its own, and that revolves around imitating jellyfish.

How Does a Robot Jellyfish Work?

When jellyfish move in the water, what happens is by flapping their bodies, they create an upward current, moving objects and nutrients up to be consumed by them. This new robot jellyfish more or less does the same thing.

It works by using artificial muscles called HAZELs, which are oil-filled sacs covered by electrodes. When the electrodes receive a current, they discharge it to the surrounding negatively charged ocean water. This causes the oil sacs to get pushed back in forth, creating the flapping movement.

This mechanism is the main draw behind these robotic jellyfish, as by using these robots, they can pull the plastic out of delicate areas like coral reefs without ever touching the reef itself. Another benefit is that these robot jellyfish are almost completely noiseless, so their presence won’t disturb other animals.

In a report in Science Advances speaking on how their technology is different from existing technology, they said, “Existing prototypes cannot interact with aquatic species gently in a noise-free manner while accomplishing diverse tasks.” These jellyfish robots, however, can, and that is where the promise of what they’re doing lies.

Moving forward.

While these small robot jellyfish are an exciting development in plastic cleaning tech, there are hurdles still to be overcome in their creation. The main one presenting itself is that, as of writing, they still require a wired connection for power, thus limiting their scope to areas where they can be plugged in. There are ongoing trials for battery packs, but so far cannot be controlled remotely.

However, that is a small issue that can be resolved quickly. It is an interesting concept to imagine cute little robot jellyfish cleaning our oceans, but it is, in all reality, much closer than we realize. The importance of realizing efficient and non-disturbing ways of cleaning our oceans is critical, as plastic pollution’s damage to ecosystems and species worldwide is innumerable.

While in some areas of the environmental movement, we can help the ongoing natural processes, like reforestation for carbon capture, in plastic pollution in marine environments, we must develop new tools to reverse the damage we have caused. What an interesting world to live in, where robot jellyfish could be a major factor.

Source Happy Eco News

This man ran across the USA to raise awareness of plastic pollution

Posted on February 11, 2020August 12, 2020 by dishanth

He’s run thousands of kilometres to raise awareness of marine pollution.
The plastic waste on his home of Bali inspired him to take action.
8 million tonnes of plastic waste end up in the sea every year.

It’s around 4,800 kilometres from New York to Los Angeles – coast-to-coast, northeast to southwest, across the mountains, plains and prairies of 13 different states. It’s a journey that would take 41 hours of non-stop driving or a flight lasting six hours.

Alternatively, you could run. Yes, run. If you can cover 32 kilometres every day it would take you approximately 160 days to complete the trip. You’d have to be crazy, right? Or maybe so determined to make a difference that you believe “no idea is crazy enough.”

Step forward Sam Bencheghib, who has just completed that feat. He ran from Battery Park in New York to Santa Monica, to raise awareness about the harm plastic pollution is inflicting on our world’s oceans. He even wore running shoes made from upcycled plastic.

Monument Valley, Colorado, gave Sam the opportunity to recreate a scene from the movie Forrest Gump
Image: Martin Parent/Sam Bencheghib

His journey ended on 1 February 2020, when he was accompanied by a group of 70 runners for his last mile before he jumped into the Pacific ocean to celebrate.

“It definitely wasn’t easy to get there but despite all the obstacles along the way, physically, mentally and emotionally, it was a life changing experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life,” he said.

Time for action

His brother Gary spoke at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos this year. Together with their sister Kelly, Sam and Gary help run the Make a Change Foundation, which fights marine plastic pollution. “There are 500 times more pieces of plastic in our ocean than there are stars in our galaxy,” Gary told the Davos audience. “The truth is that there has never been a more important time to act than now.”

“It’s starting to feel like I’ve been out here forever,” Sam wrote on 11 December
Image: Martin Parent/Sam Bencheghib

The Bencheghibs grew up on the Indonesian island of Bali. In 2017, the two brothers paddled along the heavily-polluted Citarum river in a kayak made from plastic bottles to raise awareness about the trash clogging up the waterway. At Davos, Gary was unveiling his latest initiative – Sungai Watch, an online platform that uses artificial intelligence and river barriers to detect and trap plastic and other debris. ‘Sungai’ means river in Indonesian.

Around 300 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated every year, with around eight million of those tonnes ending up the sea.

Down but not out

Sam’s journey ran into difficulties on the last stretch. With just 720 kilometres left of his mammoth journey, he damaged his Achille’s tendon. “Sometimes no matter how hard you try to do everything right, you get unlucky,” Sam wrote on the Make a Change blog. Undeterred, he picked up some hiking poles and started walking rather than running.

“I’ll be pushing through with these walking sticks, one step at a time, doing 24 miles a day until I finish this thing.”
Image: Martin Parent/Sam Bencheghib

Along the way, Sam met with residents of landlocked parts of the US to talk about his experiences dealing with coastal and river-borne plastic pollution. He visited schools and universities, conducted zero-waste workshops, and plogging events to clean up local neighbourhoods.

“I’m bringing the ocean to citizens around the US who don’t necessarily understand the problem,” Sam said in an interview last year. “A big part of it is that no matter where you live, inland or by the coasts, everyone contributes to this problem because they’re using plastic. And 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from rivers and streams.”

Written by

Sean Fleming, Senior Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

A heatwave known as the ‘blob’ may have killed a million birds – from just one species.

Posted on February 7, 2020February 2, 2020 by dishanth

Many seabird numbers have declined in recent decades.
A marine heatwave in the Pacific killed an estimated one million common guillemots, according to a new report.
As climate change continues, the risk will only rise.

The common guillemot (known as the common murre in North America) breeds in both the Pacific and the Atlantic and is among the most abundant seabirds in the northern hemisphere. But like many other seabirds, its numbers have declined over the last few decades. Part of that decline is due to the marine environment – a seabird’s home and hunting ground – becoming increasingly unpredictable and difficult to survive in.

Between the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016, a marine heatwave swept the northern Pacific Ocean that was hotter and lasted longer than any since records began in 1870. Known as “the blob”, the heatwave caused sea surface temperatures along the Pacific coast of North America to rise by 1-2°C. That may sound trivial, but it was enough to cause massive disruption in the marine ecosystem. The fish that common guillemots normally eat, such as herring, sardine and anchovy, either died or moved into cooler waters elsewhere, leaving the guillemots with little to eat. As a result, many birds starved.

6,540 common guillemot carcasses were found washed ashore in Alaska.
Image: David B. Irons, CC BY

A new study has revealed that one million common guillemots died due to the heatwave, and two thirds of them are thought to have been breeding adults. In a healthy population, about 95% of the breeding birds survive from one year to the next. But a bad year for adult survival causes big problems for the total population.

This is because guillemots live up to 40 years and mature slowly, producing a single egg per annual clutch. A female may start breeding at the age of seven and continue to breed each year until she dies. Most seabirds live similar lives because the food on which they rear their offspring is often a long way from land. Ferrying food back to the breeding colony is what limits how many offspring they can rear in any one year. Rearing just a single chick at a time makes sense, but if many adult birds of reproductive age die, there are no new chicks to replace those birds that are lost, and so the population declines.

Seabirds wrecked by ocean warming

Researchers based the estimate of one million dead guillemots on the numbers of dead or dying birds that washed up between California and the Gulf of Alaska. A total of 62,000 birds were found on 6,000km of coastline, but not all birds that die at sea end up on beaches. Previous studies have shown that the number of birds actually found dead needs to be multiplied by at least seven times – and possibly as much as several hundred times – to find the minimum estimate of the total numbers dead. That means that “one million dead seabirds” might actually be a conservative guess.

According to the new study, breeding populations in the Gulf of Alaska suffered a 10-20% decrease in numbers. Complete breeding failure, where birds either failed to lay eggs or failed to rear any chicks, was reported at 22 regularly monitored guillemot colonies in Alaska during the breeding seasons of 2015, 2016 and 2017. Complete breeding failure is extremely unusual among guillemots and it’s a clear sign that food is in extremely short supply.

The marine temperatures broke records during the heatwave.
Image: NOAA

The appearance of unusually high numbers of dead birds washed up on the shoreline is referred to as a “wreck”. Wrecks of common guillemots and related species such as puffins have been known about for many years. These population crashes may be a regular aspect of guillemot biology, but this one was far larger and over a much wider geographic area than any wreck seen before.

In most cases, wrecks are the result of persistent stormy conditions, disrupting the availability of fish on which seabirds like guillemots and puffins depend. When seas are rough and the weather harsh, the increased energy demands can kill many birds. The most recent wreck in the UK and western Europe occurred in the spring of 2014, and it killed at least 50,000 birds, mainly common guillemots and Atlantic puffins.

The common guillemot populations in the Pacific and western Europe will probably recover from both of these recent wrecks, providing there’s no further turmoil, but there’s no room for complacency. The only way scientists will know if populations have recovered is by monitoring the birds. It’s an activity that is generally regarded as the lowest form of scientific endeavour, but one that’s absolutely vital in a world of declining wildlife.

Professor Tim Birkhead and Dr Jess Meade on Skomer in Wales, 2012.
Image: Tim Birkhead

I’ve been studying and monitoring the number of common guillemots on Skomer Island, Wales since 1972. In that time, I’ve realised how essential this work is to understanding how guillemot populations work. Beach counts of dead seabirds allow scientists to detect unusual events, but these counts are meaningless without information on the overall size of the population. Without regular monitoring of seabird colonies on North America’s west coast, the researchers wouldn’t have known what proportion of the total population died, and would have missed the total breeding failures in the Alaskan colonies.

The North Pacific common guillemot wreck was unprecedented for the sheer numbers of birds killed, and the vast region over which it occurred. But the marine heatwave that caused it may be just a taste of what is to come for seabirds around the world as climate change accelerates.

Written by

Tim Birkhead, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Sheffield

This article is published in collaboration with The Conversation.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Coke, Nestlé and Pepsi top plastic polluter audit again as green groups slam recyclable packaging as ‘false solution’.

Posted on November 1, 2019August 12, 2020 by dishanth

Food and beverage firms Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo are the world’s biggest plastic polluters, a study of litter found on beaches, streets, homes, and parks in 50 countries has revealed.

The same firms have topped the global plastic polluter audit, conducted by a collective of environmental groups running cleanup operations, for the second year in succession.

This is despite initiatives the multi-national consumer goods companies have launched to address the chronic plastic pollution problem they have contributed to.

Coca-Cola has launched recyclable bottles made entirely from renewable plant-based materials, aiming to use it in all its packaging by next year. Nestlé has a plan to make all of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025, while Pepsi has pledged to develop bottles made from renewable resources.

Coke uses PlantBottle packaging, which are bottles made from plants, saves the equivalent annual emissions of more than 315,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, Coke estimates.
Image: Coca-Cola

But these measures do not address the root of the problem – the overuse of plastic by consumer goods firms – and so have not affected their standing in the global litter audit, the campaigners noted.

“Commitments by corporations like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo to address the crisis unfortunately continue to rely on false solutions like replacing plastic with paper or bioplastics and relying more heavily on a broken global recycling system,” said Abigail Aguilar, plastic campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, the lead group for the Break Free From Plastic campaign, in a media briefing on Wednesday.

“We call them false solutions because they perpetuate the throwaway culture that caused the plastic pollution crisis, and will do nothing to prevent these brands from being named the top polluters again in the future.”

As part of Break Free From Plastic, a global movement of non-governmental organisations advocating against new plastic production, Greenpeace orchestrated 4,384 cleanups in over 50 countries from August 1 to September 30, picking up 476,423 pieces of plastic. Almost half of the plastic waste was marked with a clear consumer brand.

Other companies identified in the study included Mondelez International, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Philip Morris International and Perfetti van Melle.

The world’s top 10 biggest plastic polluters in 2019.
Image: Break Free From Plastic.

Von Hernandez, global coordinator of Break Free from Plastic, called on corporations to reduce their production of single-use plastic, instead of using recycling or recyclable packaging as a solution.

He cited a 2017 study that found that 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic trash have been produced since 1950, but only 9 per cent of it has been recycled globally.

“Even if all plastic packaging were collected to be recycled, it would only be down-cycled or transformed into another inferior product that inevitably becomes waste, ending up in incinerators and landfill, polluting our oceans,” Hernandez said.

“Over the next 30 years, the amount of plastic waste is set to quadruple,” he warned.

A call for ‘alternative delivery systems’

Environmentalists urged the consumer goods companies to invest in different ways to package their products that do not create pollution.

Unilever’s hair refilling station in a mall at the Makati Central Business District in the Philippines.
Image: Unilever

Unilever, which ranked as the fifth largest polluter in the audit, launched a shampoo and conditioner refilling station in three high-traffic malls in Metro Manila, Philippines in March.

The hair and skincare giant, which owns brands such as Dove, Sunsilk, and Lux, sells many of its products in single-use plastic sachets in developing countries like the Philippines and Indonesia to make its products more affordable.

While environmentalists lauded Unilever’s intiative, they said consumers in the lower income bracket who mostly use single-use sachets will not use the refilling stations.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but malls especially in the central business district are not that accessible to the common Filipino. In our dialogue with the companies, we told them that if they are to invest and introduce an alternative [to plastics], they need to position them where they are easily accesible, like in sari-sari (retail) stores or public markets,” Aguilar said.

“Solutions must be affordable, simple, convenient, durable, and non-toxic,” he said.

Source: www.eco-business.com