About
Ocean Saviour

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains an estimated 80,000 tonnes of plastic

This pioneering project is the brainchild of Richard W. Roberts and Simon White, founders of TheYachtMarket.com who were, like so many of us, left devastated by the incredible BBC Blue Planet series aired in 2016/17.

Compelled by the need to do something to tackle the extraordinary plight of our oceans, Richard and Simon began throwing around some ideas with some of the world’s top naval architects and yacht designers, in an attempt to look at new ways to bring together existing technologies to tackle the problem.

Just a few short months later, the Ocean Saviour project has begun to take shape and is working in conjunction with several highly regarded organisations and notable figures from across the global marine industry, including designer, Ricky Smith, naval architects Dr. Andrew Baglin and Stuart Friezer, David Jones from Just One Ocean, Rory Sinclair from Big Blue Ocean Cleanup and record-breaking round the world racing legends, Dee Caffari MBE and Mike Golding OBE.

“Our oceans are a vital resource and it is essential we all do what we can to preserve them for future generations. I’m especially pleased to work with such a talented group of individuals to help make this a reality. It’s staggering to think that there is currently over five trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean which is having a huge detrimental impact on our ecosystem and the ocean’s biodiversity. It’s essential that we remove plastic before it breaks down into microplastics and, through Ocean Saviour, we aim to help eradicate the ocean of this problem.”

Ricky Smith, Designer, commented: “Ocean Saviour proposes an environmental revolution whereby we, as a community, undertake the immense and urgent task of physically collecting the plastics from the oceans and waterways. The Ocean Saviour project is vast and will require input on many levels. This is a crusade for the liberation of our oceans from the waste created by both our brilliant technology and our disregard of the oceans.”

Dr. Andrew Baglin of Multiphase Design, commented: “I’m delighted to be working alongside Richard, Simon and the team on this project. There are several variables when calculating the amount of plastic that can be removed from the water per day, including distance to ports, the operating area of the vessel and the size of the collector array that is installed, all of which are under careful development. We produce approximately 300 million tonnes of plastic each year, five times what we produced 50 years ago, and an estimated 8 million tonnes of this ends up in our oceans every year. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains an estimated 80,000 tonnes of plastic. A single Ocean Saviour vessel aims to clear five tonnes of plastic per day, that’s nearly two kilotonnes per year. This would mean that one Ocean Saviour vessel would take 40 years to clean up the Pacific gyre using plasma technology, which can therefore be scaled if there was more than one vessel in operation.”