DeepGreen Lends Vessel To Support Historic Ocean Plastic Cleanup

San Francisco, CA /PRNewswire/ - DeepGreen is proud to contribute to the health of our oceans by being a part of The Ocean Cleanup (TOC) project to remove plastics from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, in the central Pacific, over the next five years.

DeepGreen, along with the global shipping company Maersk, is contributing to this historic project by offering The Ocean Cleanup foundation the Maersk Launcher to launch its plastics cleanup project on September 8th, in San Francisco Bay. The Launcher is under lease by DeepGreen, to carry out through our Nauru incorporated and sponsored subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resource, survey and scientific work on the deep-ocean floor to recover polymetallic nodules that contain a rich-supply of cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese—metals required to power the green infrastructure from electric cars to wind turbines.

The Maersk Launcher and its crew will be instrumental in deploying TOC's unique system designed to capture a significant portion of plastic debris in the central Pacific and reduce manmade pollution that poses an environmental threat to marine wildlife.

"DeepGreen believes the health of the oceans is essential to our future and that is why we are doing our part to assist The Ocean Cleanup in its visionary mission," said Gerard Barron, CEO of DeepGreen. "We envision the oceans becoming an important source of metals for our future, providing a much cleaner alternative to land-sourced metals. As a company, we see it as our duty to not just harness cutting-edge science and technology to harvest ocean metals with minimal environmental impact but also improve the health of our oceans through our other activities."

DeepGreen's Chief Ocean Scientist, oceanographer Greg Stone, said: "I have spent my life studying and working to protect the ocean. In more than 10,000 dives, in nearly every ocean on the planet, I've spent about two years under water and I know first-hand we have a lot of work to do to improve the health of the oceans. At DeepGreen, we think about this systematically. Taking macro-plastics out of our oceans is a step in the right direction and we are excited to support TOC."

Added Stone: "As our population grows from 7.2 billion today to almost ten billion people in the next three decades, we will need more metals to power the technologies and infrastructure to get us to a low-carbon world. But after centuries of mining on land, evidence shows we're running out of options to find those metals. The social and environmental costs are just too high, and the metals are simply harder to come by.

"The ocean has the answer in the form of polymetallic nodules. By collecting them from a relatively small part of the deep ocean's abyssal plain, more than a thousand kilometers from shore and four kilometers below the surface, I believe we can find a bountiful supply of the metals we need for our future without major impacts on the ocean's health."

DeepGreen executives will attend the launch of the Ocean Cleanup Project. Both Barron and Stone are available for interviews.

About DeepGreen
DeepGreen is a Canadian company offering a new and disruptive approach to supplying the world with metals needed for economic growth and clean technologies. With its patented processing technology, DeepGreen is on track to become a leading producer of base and strategic metals obtained from vast high-grade seafloor polymetallic nodule deposits containing nickel, manganese, copper and cobalt. 

For more information About DeepGreen, please visit the website at www.deep.green  

About Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI)
NORI, a Nauruan company sponsored by the Republic of Nauru, is engaged in the exploration and responsible development of seafloor mineral resources. In 2011, NORI became the first company to obtain a license from the United Nations' International Seabed Authority to explore for minerals in the international seabed area. It will not operate near shallow coral reefs, volcanic ocean vents nor require digging, drilling or use of explosives.

About Maersk Supply Service
Maersk Supply Service provides marine services and integrated solutions to the energy sector worldwide. Maersk Supply Service is the market leader in deep-water services such as anchor handling in ultra-deep water, mooring installations, rig moves and transport of equipment to drilling rigs and production units. 

Maersk Supply Service employs an international staff of around 1100 offshore and 200 onshore people. Headquartered in Lyngby, Denmark, Maersk Supply Service is represented globally with offices in Aberdeen, Houston, St. John's, Rio de Janeiro, Accra, Lagos, Luanda, Singapore and Perth. 

Maersk Supply Service is a part of the stand-alone Energy division of A.P. Møller – Mærsk A/S. A.P. Møller – Maersk A/S employs roughly 88,000 employees across operations in 130 countries.

For more information about Maersk Supply Service, please visit the website at www.maersksupplyservice.com 

About The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup develops advanced technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic.

Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat (24), The Ocean Cleanup now employs approximately 80 engineers and researchers. The foundation is headquartered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Instead of going after plastic debris with vessels and nets — which would take many thousands of years and billions of dollars to complete — The Ocean Cleanup is designing a fleet of extremely long floating screens that will remain in the water to act like an artificial coastline, enabling the ocean to concentrate the plastic using its own current. Once fully operational, this fleet of passive collection systems is expected to remove 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 5 years' time.

After years of conducting reconnaissance expeditions, scale model test and the deployment of prototypes of the North Sea, the assembly of the first full-scale cleanup system is near completion. This first system is set to be deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from San Francisco Bay in September 2018. It is expected that the first shipment of debris collected y this system will be returned to land for recycling before the end of the year.