Setting sail from Hawaii. Courtesy of The Situation Room/eXXpedition
In 2019, eXXpedition announced an ambitious plan: crews of women from different countries and professions would sail around the world to investigate ocean plastic. More than 300 participants were expected across the proposed two-year programme, combining scientific sampling with public events about preventing pollution. The voyage began that October, but the pandemic later cut short its sailing route.
The material reaching the sea includes packaging, fishing gear and fibres shed from textiles. A widely circulated warning that ocean plastic could outweigh fish by 2050 helped bring attention to the issue, but it was a projection under particular assumptions, not a measured present-day condition or an inevitable outcome.
The planned two-year voyage, organised by the marine-pollution nonprofit eXXpedition, was designed to collect samples across contrasting environments. Its proposed 38,000-nautical-mile route included the Arctic, South Pacific islands, the Galapagos and the ocean gyres where circulating currents can concentrate floating debris. Comparing places with different currents, coastlines and nearby sources of waste was central to the expedition’s purpose.
The often-cited estimate of eight million tonnes entering the ocean annually belongs to earlier research, rather than a real-time count. Once larger objects fragment, a beach cleanup alone cannot recover all the material dispersed through seawater. Microplastics vary in shape and size; they are not uniformly the size of plankton, which itself includes many different organisms.
Emily Penn, eXXpedition Director and Sky Ocean Rescue Ambassador, at the helm. Image: Courtesy of Eleanor Church/Larkrise Pictures/eXXpedition
Those particles, along with plastic microbeads used in toiletries as well as other household products, can be ingested by marine life, harming ecosystems and the food chain.
Penn, who co-founded eXXpedition in 2014, said that the solution was to "turn off the tap" on land and prevent the plastic from entering the sea in the first place.
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The scientific programme set out to identify the plastics encountered and investigate likely sources, with collaborators connected to the University of Plymouth’s International Marine Litter Research Unit. Identifying a polymer is one part of that work: the same material can have many uses, so its chemical identity alone does not establish which company or industry released a particular fragment. Questions about exposure and health require further evidence beyond finding plastic in a water sample.
Hawaii Cleanup. Image: Courtesy of Eleanor Church/Larkrise Pictures/eXXpedition
The announced schedule called for ten women from different disciplines and countries on each leg aboard the 21-metre, approximately 70-foot S.V. TravelEdge. The proposed journey had 30 legs and a departure from Britain scheduled for October 7, 2019. Those figures describe the intended programme; the eventual sailing route covered fewer legs.
The participant backgrounds included science, filmmaking, product design, photography, teaching and sport. That mix gave the project several ways to communicate its findings: a classroom discussion, a photograph and a design decision can reach different audiences.
Crew performing on board research. Image: Courtesy of Eleanor Church/Larkrise Pictures/eXXpedition
Community visits were part of the plan alongside the sailing. School talks, beach-waste surveys and cleanups connected the material found offshore with the products and disposal systems people encounter on land. These activities also offered a chance to hear local experiences of waste management rather than treating each stop only as a sampling location.
The planned route was interrupted
Eight sailing legs were completed, according to eXXpedition’s impact account. They crossed the Atlantic and continued through the Caribbean, Galapagos, Easter Island and South Pacific to Tahiti before COVID-19 cancelled the remaining legs. From January to June 2021, virtual voyages carried the programme forward through online and local activities. The interruption changed how participants could work together, but the samples already collected still provided material for analysis.
A sample is evidence from a particular place
The crew used a manta trawl to collect floating particles, a Niskin bottle to sample water 25 metres below the surface, and a grab sampler for near-shore seabed sediment. These methods reached different parts of the marine environment. A calm-looking surface could not tell the whole story of what was suspended below it or had settled to the bottom.
The project reports analysing more than 2,300 microplastic pieces and identifying 23 polymer types. Most particles were fragments of larger objects. These are findings from the expedition’s samples, rather than a census of the entire ocean. Recording where and how samples were collected makes comparisons possible and gives later researchers a way to judge what the results can support. It also connects Penn’s emphasis on prevention with a practical question: which sources of waste can be reduced before their products break into pieces that are much harder to retrieve? eXXpedition’s Round the World impact account.
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