Russia Launches Drifting Buoys to Track Plastic Debris in White Sea

ARKHANGELSK, May 13. /TASS/. Drifting buoys with radio beacons will be launched in the White Sea to study routes of spreading plastic debris towards the water area's hard-to-reach locations, press service of the Kenozersko National Park said. The Wavy Sea: Pollution of Northern Seas project is supported by the Presidential Foundation for Nature. "Two drifting beacon buoys will identify routes of moving debris from beaches to the hard-to-reach shores of the White Sea. This data will help us to understand how debris is getting into the water area. The study is conducted by the Kenozersko and the Onega Pomorie National Parks under the Wavy Sea: Pollution of Northern Seas project," the press service said. The project's purpose is to identify waste generation sources and to suggest ways to cut marine debris amounts. The buoys will help specialists to visualize routes of moving household garbage in the White Sea. "A buoy will conventionally mean a plastic bottle left on the shore, which then was picked up by the current and carried to no one knows where. At this point, plastic already becomes an alien part of the aquatic and coastal ecosystem and will probably remain there for good: it will be drifting and a strong wave will throw it onto some inaccessible beach, where the bottle will remain, it will be decomposing slowly into microplastics for hundreds of years. We will use the satellite to track the buoy's movement to demonstrate how litter on the beach may travel," the project's leader Alina Kravchenko said. The buoys were made at the Motyzhev Marine Observation Systems scientific research laboratory in Sevastopol. A team of scientists is creating environmental monitoring systems. "We have used the experience of working with low-orbit satellite groupings to transmit hydrometeorology data by using satellite terminals and antennas of our own design, which now are used in automated buoy stations," the laboratory's leader Maria Starodub said. Satellite GPS trackers for buoys were manufactured by the Marlin-Yug Company. A similar technology has been used in environmental monitoring of White Sea seals. In 2023, specialists of the Onega Pomorie National Park and invited experts attached special satellite telemetry sensors to seals to assess the population's conditions.