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'eXXpedition' Leg 4 voyage

Crossing the Caribbean Sea diagonally from Antigua -one of the Leeward Islands- to Aruba - a Dutch Island just next to Venezuela- via Bonaire, made me appreciate the immensity, the beauty and the fragility of our planet.

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'eXXpedition' Leg 4 findings

As expected from previous research, the concentration of plastics was not as intense in the Caribbean sea as it had been on the earlier part of eXXpedition's journey, as Leg 2 traversed the North Atlantic Gyre finding debris from micro-plastics to a floating garden chair!

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We still found much too much of it! What we found also on the Caribbean islands we surveyed was poor waste management, with landfill sites right next to the sea with no barrier ; a heavy rainfall, let alone a hurricane, would take tons of debris into the sea.

Plastics accumulation: This map visualises the estimated concentration of floating plastic debris in the world’s oceans. The densities are computed with a numerical model calibrated against field data. The weight density estimates are presented as a dot density map where one dot represents 20 kg of floating plastic. The estimated global mass of marine debris is plotted using more than 13 million dots. Source: Lebreton et. al 2014  and Dumpark.

To understand more about the science, on land and in the oceans, please click here.

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'eXXpedition' Leg 4 film

This short film captures -in under 4 minutes - the aim of the voyage, the on-land studies, the science on board of the boat and the general sailing / living on a yacht with another 13 women who were completely unknown to me until I stepped on deck for the very first day!

The amazing 'eXXpedition' Leg 4 crew

An incredible, versatile lot of women formed the Leg 4 crew. Each with their own background, their own skill, their own interest and their own life story - however young some of them were (including the 3 pros)!

Those girls will be friends for ever, having enjoyed (and endured at times!) some extraordinary times together, on a small boat in the middle of nowhere, with only the horizon, the sunrise and sunset and the moon and stars as companions.

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'eXXpedition' Leg 4 photos
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