The Nonsuch Expeditions

Message in a bottle - Ocean Plastics Project

In 2017, the DENR (Department of the Environment and Natural Resources) and the Nonsuch Expeditions Teams started setting aside the Ocean Plastics they collected that wash ashore on the small, 100M long ocean-facing beach of the Nonsuch Island Nature Reserve for further analysis, as part of the ongoing Nonsuch Plastics Project.

Every years TONS of ocean plastics are collected, and virtually none of it originates from Bermuda!

How can we, and other island and coastal communities that are often-times disproportionately impacted by other people's trash, have a voice in this Global problem?

This ongoing, multi-year effort is being rolled out in Phases, with local and international. students, collaborators, partners and sponsors, to study and showcase the problem in unique ways, share the lessons learned, develop technologies that can assist, and replicate this initiative in similarly impacted jurisdictions around the world, such as the Galapagos and Easter Island, and at events such as COP28.

Phase 1 > Pilot Study: For the first phase of the project, after having collected 3.5 tons over several years, the Nonsuch Expeditions and DENR teams invited local NGO: Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB)* to participate in a study based on the initial collection and collaborate on a short local film, which AXIS Capital sponsored. *KBB will not be involved in the following phases/ocean plastics tracking portions of the project.

Phase 2 > The Message in a Bottle Ocean Plastics Tracking Project: Over 90% of the trash collected was not from Bermuda, and whilst beach cleanups are helpful, only a very small percentage of ocean plastics are washed up and can be collected. The majority circulate continuously, either sinking to the ocean floor, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces that are impossible to collect, or are consumed by ocean wildlife, thus entering the food chain. Therefore one of the most impactful solutions is stopping plastics at their source before they enter the ocean.

For Phase 2, the team has continued with the ongoing multi-year Nonsuch clean-up effort, with plastics again being saved for future studies, time series, analysis, and outreach.

In parallel as part of our efforts to trace and address plastics at the source, we have launched the “Message in a Bottle” Plastic Tracking Project and partnered with ZSL (Zoological Society of London) and the Arribada Initiative. This expands upon prior efforts with National Geographic on the Ganges - (Video), with the University of Exeter, and deployments at the G7, at COP26, and the UN Oceans Conference and now COP28.

With assistance from local Ocean Technology Development Facility Station-B, we are jointly developing and deploying soda bottle-shaped, satellite-connected ocean drifters that local students will send to students around the Atlantic Basin in proven or suspected sources of our plastics, to launch into the North Atlantic Gyre / Sargasso Sea. These devices will report back multiple times a day with their GPS and other sensor data for 2+ years, which the students and scientists can track on interactive maps. This initiative will not only help with public engagement and arm international policymakers with real-world proof of the scale and wide-spread sources of the problem, but it will also contribute to Oceanographic Science, as we continue to add additional sensors to the platform. 

On the map below you will see one of our bottles that was deployed at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon in June of 2022, which after heading South past past Morocco and then the Canaries, then made its way across The Atlantic towards the Caribbean, surviving Hurricane Lee as it passed north of the Dominican Republic, and had turned North towards Bermuda, but then doubled back and beached itself in the Bahamas (whilst our Team was at COP28).

Following successful meetings at the Our Oceans Conference in Panama in 2023, we will now be replicating this project in other high-profile sensitive island and coastal jurisdictions, which are also disproportionally impacted by other people’s trash with the Galapagos and Easter Island set to be amongst the first. Our Team has just attended COP28 where a mock deployment was conducted, whilst we work with local NGOs and Educators to plan for local/regional deployments with students…

AXIS Capital are continuing to support this effort by sponsoring the first Bermuda bottles that are being deployed as part of the BUEI Youth Climate Summit, and we are seeking other sponsors for: the COP28 and international effort, or to sponsor the next batch of bottles for local public and private schools, or the overall development of the platform itself. Please contact us for more information and sponsorship packages.

Bookmark and return to this page for ongoing project updates.

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