Our Most Ambitious Project Yet

In June 2024, Ocean Plastics Recovery Project (OPR) will establish a large-scale marine debris collection and monitoring site at Kayak Island, Alaska which will be our biggest undertaking to date, one of the largest in the United States this year, and which over time will serve as an annual indicator of global efforts to reduce marine debris pollution.

In surveying impacts of the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami, NOAA conducted the most extensive survey of marine debris in Alaska to date. One of the largest accumulations of marine debris discovered by that survey was located at Kayak Island on the coast of the central Gulf of Alaska, just off the northernmost portion of the Alaska coastal current. OPR co-founder Andy Schroeder oversaw a series of cleanups in the years following the Japan tsunami (2014-2016) that removed over 180 tons of marine debris from an 18-mile stretch of this area. These crews averaged between 50-100 lbs of marine debris per labor hour, with daily hauls of up to 5 tons per day.

Kayak Island in 2016

With funding support from NOAA through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, OPR will return to Kayak Island for the first marine debris cleanup in eight years. In preparation for the effort, OPR conducted a flyover of the Island in October of 2023 and saw little if any evidence of the work done the previous decade, indicating a high degree of re-accumulation in the years well after the tsunami event. In Schroeder's stark assessment, "it's all back"

Of course, it didn't really come back. Instead, new plastics have continued to flow to Kayak Island from gyres and out of rivers and from coastlines around the North and South Pacific, not triggered by a seismic event but by global production and consumption far outpacing capacity for collection and recycling. The pictures you see here are a symptom of an ocean in distress. At OPR we believe we must reverse the flow. We must remove plastics from the marine environment, undoing decades of harm, restoring critical habitat so that nature can thrive, and returning ocean plastics to the circular economy.

We have work to do.

View from Cape St. Elias, October 2023

OPR is now hiring for this summer's removal effort, scheduled for June 3-July 12, 2024. The crew will consist of 12 individuals supported by helicopter. Crews will serve two-week hitches and be based at Cape St. Elias lighthouse. OPR’s intentions are to sustain a seasonal monitoring effort indefinitely and to report out results each year.

You can learn more about our mission and current projects on our website, or click here to go right to the job description and see how to apply.

***APPLICATIONS CLOSED 3/1/2024. PLEASE CHECK BACK NEXT YEAR!***