Unfortunately, the efforts of many NGOs have so far not been enough to even come close to eliminating the garbage in the oceans. Because there is a lot more added every day! Of course, the best thing would be to get all companies, countries and politicians to ban plastic tomorrow. At the very least, every company should be obliged to take back and reprocess new products after they have expired. This must  continue to be tried by all means. But who among us still believes in a short-term solution? In the most optimistic case, we will have increasing numbers of plastic waste in terms of marine pollution for decades to come. And it’s not just about plastic waste, but also about large quantities of fishing nets that, for whatever reason, float in the sea and eventually sink to the bottom. Likewise, more oil and toxins are released into the sea each year from shipping than from one-off disasters, when yet another oil tanker hits a reef and bursts. You could build these tankers much safer today. But that costs a lot of money. 

We have therefore decided to take massive action against this pollution. We develop highly scalable solutions to combat pollution in our oceans, from depths of up to several hundred meters. We are also developing mini-robots to detect foreign objects at a depth of several thousand metres. If the technology is already available, we will buy it and adapt it for our purposes together with the partner company. 

It starts with a small solution called Ocean Football. This is a small submarine that keeps the net to be towed at a stable sea depth. The network, the Ocean Tube, is being developed together with marine biologists and oceanographers from various universities. For us it is important that we do not affect the flora and fauna and reduce them to a minimum. The system is so scalable that, in principle, smaller ships and yachts could also be used to remove garbage from the sea. And here we come to one of the most obvious challenges. We will probably also need hundreds of such devices, ships and nets, and thousands of helpers, to stand a chance against this immense amount of garbage. But if we never tackle this, the pollution will get worse every year. Today there is no alternative but to solve this problem. Our own nets are made from natural and degradable fibers. We plan to use them in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia as soon as possible. Ideally, this will kickstart a new industry to create hundreds of new jobs. 

After the Ocean Football we work on the Ocean Crawler. This submarine will be fully automatic and equipped with AI-controlled software in order to systematically drive through previously defined sea quadrants and remove the garbage. A powerful electric motor or, if possible, a hydrogen drive – coupled with one or more electric motors for control – should be used as the drive. We will optionally equip this vehicle with a cabin so that it can also be used as a deep-sea vehicle and can accommodate two passengers. This expands the area of application and we could become profitable with it in the medium term.

The ultimate vision is the Ocean Hoover, which is over 200 meters long. This device no longer requires an ocean tube or net. It will first collect the garbage like in a giant tube and if the limit is reached, it will balloon the garbage to the sea surface. A “harvester” will pick up the balloons and transport them to shore.

So-called hydrocopters are used to ensure that everything runs smoothly and for maintenance. In order to detect oil and toxic substances, we plan to supplement the drones available on the market with additional measuring devices and special software. The drones will be able to track merchant ships over long distances. If pollutants are released, a report is then sent to the nearest coast guard. The potential use of these new devices alone should drastically reduce the illegal capping of toxins.