Fantastic Voyage: Plastiki Mission Control

Posted by Sherezada on Oct 8, 2009

Since the days of the Gold Rush, San Francisco has served as home port to ships of all types, from fishing feluccas to World War II submarines. But in all its years, the city has never harbored a vessel quite like the Plastiki.

A 60-foot catamaran made from more than 12,000 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled materials, the Plastiki is a marriage of modern engineering and environmental activism. Its mission: "to beat waste by inspiring sustainable solutions and to highlight the ecological damage being done to the world’s oceans."

Though construction on the Plastiki is taking place on San Francisco’s Pier 31, visitors can find out more about this unique vessel further down the Embarcadero, at Pier 45. There, you’ll find Plastiki’s Mission Control, an interactive activity and educational center that guides visitors of all ages through the research, development, and journey of this extraordinary expedition.

The Journey

The project is spearheaded by activist David de Rothschild and his organization Adventure Ecology. When the boat launches from San Francisco, the Plastiki will embark on an ambitious 10,000 nautical mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, staffed by a team of adventurers and scientists. Making about a dozen stops at various islands and ports, the Plastiki will ultimately drop anchor in Sydney, Australia.

The journey targets oceanic locations that have been greatly affected by pollution, including dead zones (marine areas where there is little to no oxygen available for organisms) and sites of ocean acidification, coral bleaching, and rising ocean levels. Plastiki will also make an important stop at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — which was the initial inspiration for the voyage — a thoroughly polluted region of ocean spanning several hundred miles in diameter.

Mission Control

Though only a select few will take to the open seas, everyone can take part in the Plastiki’s experience at the Mission Control learning center. Full of blueprints and sketches, expedition equipment, navigational charts, maps, touchscreen films, and fun and interactive work stations, guests learn firsthand about the process of building the ship and its ambitious mission.

Once the expedition sets sail, Mission Control will provide live feeds, webcasts, blogs, voice files, photography, and short films that document the crew’s amazing adventures as they negotiate the vast and volatile waters of the Pacific. In time, Mission Control will also host public lectures, seminars, and workshops by leading field experts, adventurers, scientists, and environmental storytellers.

In sharing the adventure at Plastiki Mission Control, the crew aims not only to encourage a wider community to reduce, re-use, and recycle, but also to inform and inspire a new team of adventurers and changemakers towards a better way of living.