The Exploragyre project

ExploraGyre is a future-oriented and challenging project led by 5 students from the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (National Institute of Applied Sciences) of Lyon, France. Their background in Biology, Ecology, Physics and Informatics is essential for environmental questions, and particularly the plastic ocean pollution. Every year and for a long time, 12.7 billions of tons of plastics are poured in the ocean. At the end of the last century, an alarming plastic continent was discovered in the Pacific ocean. Now, it is up to the North Atlantic ocean to reveal its own plastic continent. "Plastic continent" does not reflect the real challenge: it is not a localized but a global phenomenon, it is not stable but a moving mass with a poorly known dynamic, it is not disconnected from the marine ecosystems but, on the contrary, closely linked to it. The reality is more blurred: a large broth of plastics, more or less compacted depending on the currents.