Emily Penn is an ocean advocate, skipper and co-founder of eXXpedition.

Navigating Our Way Towards a Plastic-Free Ocean

Research sailing vessel Sea Dragon using a Manta Trawl to collect ocean plastics during an eXXpedition mission to the North Pacific Gyre in 2018. eXXpedition/Jen Russell
Plastic waste and other debris in Cardiff Bay, Wales, 2015. Charos Pix/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Ocean-borne plastics found on a Caribbean island beach during eXXpedition Round the World, 2019. eXXpedition/Sophie Dingwall
Emily Penn (centre) and colleagues analyse samples of ocean plastics aboard the sailing vessel TravelEdge using a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) machine, 2019. eXXpedition/Sophie Bolesworth
Emily Penn attaches a tracking device to a floating mass of ocean debris in the North Pacific Gyre, 2018. eXXpedition/Lark Rise Pictures

Plastic pollution doesn’t know political or cultural borders. We all share one planet, and global problems transcend all boundaries, which means the solutions need to as well.

Know Your Ocean. Love Your Ocean.

Expedition Sailing Vessel Sea Dragon setting out in search of the North Pacific Gyre. March 2012. © Dave Cornthwaite

On my extensive voyages across the globe I have discovered that it is the same story everywhere—not only in the gyres, but all the way from the Tropics to the Arctic. Our oceans have become a fine soup of plastic fragments.