Clear Blue Sea is a startup nonprofit organization dedicated to cleansing the oceans of plastic pollution through prevention and remediation efforts. What can we do together? Educate. Investigate. Innovate. Remediate. Advocate.
Clear Blue Sea’s innovation is an unmanned, autonomous, wind- and solar- powered marine robot that harvests floating plastic from marine environments. We call our robot “FRED” – Floating Robot for Eliminating Debris.
EDUCATE: Clear Blue Sea educates our youth on the problems and solutions related to marine plastic pollution through classroom presentations, hands-on projects, and beach cleanups.
INVESTIGATE: Clear Blue Sea works closely with marine scientists to advance research on ocean plastic pollution and its impact on the environment and all life forms.
INNOVATE: Clear Blue Sea is innovating a large marine robot that is unmanned, autonomous, wind and solar-powered. We call our robot FRED for “Floating Robot for Eliminating Debris” since it is designed to harvest floating plastic trash in our oceans, rivers, and harbors.
REMEDIATE: Clear Blue Sea plans to implement large fleets of FREDs to cleanse massive plastic garbage accumulations wherever it is needed. We will direct and monitor our FRED fleet from a mission control center. Harvested plastic will be brought to recycling factories for repurposing.
ADVOCATE: Clear Blue Sea believes in changes to policies, regulations, practices that will prevent further plastic pollution and will enable successful cleansing of our marine environments. Coupled with education, advocacy can bring about powerful changes in our beliefs, values, and action.
Clear Blue Sea is currently in the Prototype phase for our marine robot FRED. During the next two years, Clear Blue Sea will design, engineer, and build a functional FRED prototype to be tested in San Diego ocean waters. During this first phase, we will also build our community presence, educational programs, and a virtual consortium of local organizations to achieve our goals.
After prototyping, we will enter the Pilot phase, where we will implement an operational pilot program to design, fabricate, test, and operate a small fleet of marine robots. This will include a fleet of about 6 FREDs under command and control of our Robot Operations Services Enterprise “ROSE”, a manned facility likely located in Hawaii which will function as a mission control center. FREDs will be launched from their production site and autonomously sailed to chosen marine locations for test and evaluation of Clear Blue Sea’s Concept of Operations.
