Out of the Lab, Into the Wild

Island Trails Network is off to another great start on marine debris removal from Izhut Bay on Afognak island, about 30 miles north of Kodiak.  Bays like this one harbor tons of plastic bottles, net, and rope in various states of decay and threaten fish and coastal-dwelling wildlife. This week we’ve got help from two participating universities; Oregon State and Western Washington. 

At OPR, we’re bent on finding useful applications for the tons of marine plastics that continue to be extracted from the world’s oceans.  All of this testing requires samples, and lots of them.  So we ship ocean plastics by the container from our forward operating base in Kodiak to our partners.