Ocean Missions' 2021 round up: Advancing ocean conservation during a pandemic - Part II

By Belén Garcia Ovide, Safina Center Launchpad Fellow

Ocean Missions has been kept busy in 2021! What follows is a continuation of the achievements and milestones we began running through in this previous blog post. We hope reading about our work has you inspired!

June (continued)…

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Workshop

We had the wonderful opportunity to do something new and host activities for the participants of the Reykjadalur family summer holiday program for children with disabilities in our home port of Húsavík. We spent a lovely Sunday morning showing them our manta trawl we use for microplastic sampling and looking at microplastics, zooplankton, and more under the microscope. We always find the world through the microscope fascinating and we loved that the children shared our enthusiasm! Maybe best of all, we finally found the perfect moment to get help creating art from plastic we have collected during past beach cleanups. The children colourfully painted pieces of broken fishing buoys and made beautiful necklaces, as well as started painting some of the many complete buoys we have collected, which we look forward to hanging up in our workspace.

At Ocean Missions we always aim to inspire others to care for our oceans, however this event was also very inspiring for us, meeting such inquisitive and positive kids! We very much look forward to next weekend when another group from Reykjadalur will visit us.

July

Landscapes Conservation Course

It is the second year that we arrange these courses. The courses are dedicated to local kids (14-16 years old). The aim of these courses is to increase their awareness about their local landscapes and connect them to nature from a conservation point of view. During the courses we take them to experience sustainable whale watching practices, to learn about underwater acoustic and noise pollution and to participate on our regular clean ups, where they can learn about the plastic pollution problem. The Landscapes Conservation Course is supported by the municipality of Húsavík and it is part of their summer program to offer activities that can motivate the kids and prepare them for the work life.

Sailing the Edge of the Arctic

A three-day sailing expedition onboard Schooner Opal in collaboration with North Sailing. Wind in the sails, green electricity and local ingredients, all we can do to reduce the carbon footprint of the tour. During this journey we set sails from Húsavík and visited some of the most remote beaches in the tip of the western side of Skjálfandi Bay and spend the night in Flatey Island. The next day, we reached Grimsey Island, reaching Article Circle. Just there, in the most northern point of Iceland, we found the highest amount of microplastics in ocean surface till the date. The TV show 3 op Reis, a traveling program from the Netherlands, joined us to report the mission for a Dutch TV series program.

Plastic Exhibition at the Whale Museum

“Ocean of Plastics,” is the name of the new plastic exhibition presented at the Whale Museum in Húsavík. A brilliant initiative by Eva Björk, director at the Whale Museum in collaboration with Ocean Missions. The exhibition explains the current problem of the plastic pollution, it explains the origin and the evolution of the plastic in our societies but it also addresses the current threats to marine fauna. Further, a section is dedicated to action and solutions to empower locals and visitors that come from all over the world to learn about the whales here, both at the sea but also at the museum. The exhibition will be open at least until the end of the season!

August

Surveys - Questionnaires

To support the work regarding the implementation of the first “Hope Spot,” supported by Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue, in Iceland, Ocean Missions is carrying a simple study to gather opinions and interests from our passengers about their experience on whale watching tours, the bay and general environmental issues. This survey is dedicated to Whale Watching visitors in Skjálfandi Bay, Húsavík, and the aim is to study sustainability development opportunities in the region.

At the moment we are working on developing more surveys dedicated to Húsavík stakeholders and local business to investigate the interests of the community sustainable coastal planning and protection in the Bay.

Read more about the work of Ocean Mission on the Hope Spot project here.

Langanes Project

Four tonnes of trash in less than 2km of coastline at “the end of the world”!

This is the result of last weekend’s clean-up effort on the Langanes peninsula!

For the first time, Ocean Missions arranged a two-day, intensive clean-up of the Langanes coastline, gathering 20 volunteers from different organizations with a clear purpose: to remove the trash from the coastline and claim environmental action. Representatives from the municipality of Þórshöfn hosted the participants, providing accommodation, helping with logistics and even participating in the cleaning efforts. Tommi Knúts from Blái Herinn (the Blue Army) also joined the effort to help and to inspire the younger generations. Enthusiastic locals, volunteers from World Wide Friends and students from the University of Iceland Húsavik Research Center came together to learn, clean and explore Langanes.

“I cannot believe how much trash there is in this remote place”

“It’s a never-ending story!”

“ I see people bending down with every step to pick up something!”

“ This is so depressing!”

These are some of the testimonials from the participants that took part in the event. Approximately 4 tonnes of trash was collected in less than 2km of coastline. Langanes peninsula has approximately 140 km of coastline and while driving along it, you can see trash all the way along. Most of the litter removed from the coastline was fishing gear, including big nets, buoys and plastic containers.

Globally, more than 640,000 metric tons of nets, lines, pots and traps used in commercial fishing are still dumped and discarded in the sea every year, the same weight as 55,000 double-decker buses, which is deadly for marine wildlife (Greenpeace annual report, 2019).

According to Tommi from The Blue Army, who is in close connection with the national authorities, the costs of this cleaning effort would have cost the government approximately 1 million Icelandic Krona ($7,865 USD)/ton. Currently, the Ministry of Environment is developing an action plan to monitor plastic pollution and clean the Icelandic coastline in which, hopefully, Ocean Missions and other local organizations that are working on plastic pollution will take part. Regular clean ups are very important to keep the coastline free of pollution, however, it is fundamental that Iceland creates a management plan to recycle as much as possible of the trash that is found in the shore lines, and to avoid the usage of landfills.

As scientists form the core of Ocean Missions, this clean-up was not only a movement to claim environmental protection, but it also served to gather scientific data about pollution on the coastline. A standardized protocol to study the type and amount of litter was used, which can be found in a recent report published by AMAP and can be used to monitor the problem, as well as to implement further management plans to protect our coastline from plastic pollution.

Read more about this effort in the Icelandic news, here.

Looking ahead…September

Autumn Ocean Missions Expedition

September 27 to October 3 aboard Ópal: 12 places available. Read more or sign up: https://oceanmissions.org/next-expeditions/

Retrieval of acoustic buoys

Last year we teamed up with North Sailing, and Rannsóknasetur Háskóla Íslands a Húsavík (Research Centre) teams, to deploy two passive acoustic monitoring devices in the western edge of the Icelandic continental shelf on behalf of WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature). The aim is to study blue whales vocalizations and the overlapping with shipping noise for a year time period.

Participation on the event “Ocean Films Húsavík”

Annual film festival to showcase local ocean-related films.

Scientific research letter

On microplastic pollution data collected aboard Ópal in 2019, in collaboration with Erica Cirino and Roskilde University.

October

Working on a project to create an “Icelandic Clean up Network”

Working on a collaboration with the University of Wake Forest University Carolina, USA to host a Sustainability Course here as part of their Sustainability Master Program

Collaborations and partnerships made through 2021:

International Plastic Oceans International
World of Waves
World Wide Friends
The Blue Army
Eco Arvid