38 ENVIRONMENTAL LABORATORY
Exxpedition renaming ceremony
RTW Leg4 Jamie Colman exxpedition
exxpedition leg2 Sophie Dingwall
RTW8 eXXpedition Emily Penn
RTW5 eXXpedition Sophie Dingwall
RTW Leg4 Jamie Colman exxpedition
AN INTERVIEW WITH EMILY PENN, FOUNDER OF EXXPEDITION
Atlantic and Pacifi c Ocean. We didn’t have any running water onboard for a shower, so we had to just stop the boat and go for a swim! One morning, I jumped in the water and found a toothbrush fl oating by. At the time, we were 800 miles from the nearest land. In fact, the closest people to us were the space station in orbit above our heads. And I remember thinking, this is the most remote part of our planet and there’s a toothbrush, and then a cigarette lighter, and a bottle top and a comb fl oating by – and then we start to realise the fragments in between. Since then, my career has been dedicated to fi nding solutions to tackle ocean plastic pollution and has taken me all over the world facilitating science at sea, outreach and the implementation of solutions on land. In 2014, I co-founded eXXpedition – organising all-women sailing voyages with a focus on plastic and toxic pollution in the ocean.
2) When you’re on an expedition, how do you analyse the water? What equipment do you use
and what are you looking for? During our at-sea missions, when we’re on-board we use a manta trawl to assess microplastics in the surface of the ocean and a NISKIN bottle to collect sub-surface water from a depth of 25 m to understand how microplastics are sinking through the water column. We also collect sediment using a grab sampler when we are in coastal waters. The at-sea research is combined with land- based research - litter surveys, waste management assessments etc - to be able to investigate the situation in a holistic way.
Emily Penn studying sample - credit: Eleanor Church, Lark Rise Pictures
1) Can you tell us about how eXXpedition started? What inspired you to start these voyages?
I’ve always loved our ocean and I learned to sail when I was a child. In 2008, I was hitchhiking from England to Australia for a job as an architect, which is what I trained in, but I wanted to get there without taking an airplane, so I ended up on a boat crossing the
In our water samples, the majority of what we fi nd are microplastics: small fragments which have broken off from larger plastic items, however understanding the sources of these small pieces of plastic can be challenging, and the fi rst step is to work out what type of plastic they are.
On-board during eXXpedition Round the World, we used a PerkinElmer Spectrum Two FTIR spectrometer, and this instrument allows us to do just that. The FTIR spectrometer uses infrared light to identify polymers, so we can work out whether the fragment is made of polyethylene, polypropylene or any other type of plastic. So far during our voyages we have found a high prevalence of polyethylene in surface waters; this plastic is used widely in food packaging, bottles, fi lms and plastic bags.
We’ve recently published a scientifi c paper which is the fi rst holistic assessment of plastic pollution in the Southern Caribbean. The full study – Source, Sea and Sink – a holistic approach to understanding plastic pollution in the Southern Caribbean comes from our research in the Caribbean on the fi rst stages of our eXXpedition Round the World mission.
Processing a sample - credit: Eleanor Church, Lark Rise Pictures
IET NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
WWW.ENVIROTECH-ONLINE.COM
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