A floating boom has surrounded a large two-masted sailing vessel that sank over the weekend at its Alameda dock in the Oakland Estuary.
The Kaisei is a replica of a 151-foot brigantine tall ship and is owned by the Bay Area nonprofit Ocean Voyages Institutes, which uses the ship to draw global attention to the problem of marine debris and plastics in the ocean.
The ship began sinking on Sunday night and a boom around the vessel was deployed Monday afternoon by the Oakland and Alameda fire departments to contain any spilled fuel. The U.S. Coast Guard is working on containment with the National Response Corporation, an environmental cleanup company.
In 2009, the crew of the Kaisei, which means ‘ocean planet’ in Japanese, embarked on a month-long expedition to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, an area the size of Texas.
It is the world’s largest patch of floating garbage, compiled by the swirl of global ocean currents. Scientists collected hundreds of samples of marine debris and fish, which were found to contain plastics. Their mission was made into a film called Project Kaisei Expedition.
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