Interview: Fighting Plastic Pollution with Wings of the Ocean
Plastic pollution in the world's oceans has reached unprecedented levels in the last 15 years. Meet a French NGO that's using the power of the winds to engage citizens in the fight.
Author’s note: We’ve spent the last two months sailing from Montenegro to the Caribbean, traveling nearly 2000 nautical miles in the Mediterranean Sea alone. It doesn’t get as much publicity as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but the Med is one of the global seas most affected by plastic pollution, receiving an estimated 730 tonnes of plastic waste every day — that’s about the weight of seven blue whales, for scale!
We’re sad to report that from firsthand experience, you can see this plastic pollution everywhere. En route from Kotor to Gibraltar, we saw everything from plastic bottles to single-use shopping bags bobbing alongside our sailboats. It saddened us immensely to watch the juxtaposition of marine life (dolphins, whales, sea turtles!) with man-made litter.
What can be done to fight plastic pollution in marine waters? We dug into the Green Journey archive to revisit this conversation with Wings of the Ocean, a French NGO working to protect the oceans through a combination of waste collection and citizen science. We spoke with them earlier this year in Nantes (Polo’s hometown) near the end of their annual voyage. There are more sailing stories coming soon (featuring seasickness, swashbuckling, and grog-drinking) but in the meantime, let this tide you over until the next report!
— Megan & Polo
On an unseasonably warm September morning in Nantes, France, we hopped on our bikes and head down to the Loire River to meet with some of the newest (temporary) residents of Nantes. Anchored right outside the famous Machines de L’Isles is the Scylla, a decades-old aluminum vessel that, after retirement from its first iteration as an expedition vessel sailing to Norway, Sweden and Iceland, has found new life as a headquarters for a group of dedicated climate champions who are working to fight plastic pollution in France.
You’ve probably come across at least a few statistics or discussions on plastic pollution in your lifetime: remember in 2015 when a video of an injured sea turtle sparked global pushback against plastic straws? Or what about some of the The Ocean Cleanup’s viral TikToks? But despite these flash-pan moments of progress, marine plastic pollution, remains almost an inconceivably large problem — it’s estimated that there 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean today, and that number is only going up.
But the problem with plastic pollution is that dealing with this massive issue can’t just be a matter of cleanup — we need real behavior and policy change to shift from our single-use plastic society to something more sustainable.
We met up with the Wings of the Ocean team, just before they headed off for their first Dépollution Action of their two weeks in Nantes. We sat down with Marc, captain of the S.Y. Scylla, to learn more about this incredible organization and how they’re taking on a massive mission, one city at a time.
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Tackling the plastic pollution problem
The Green Journey (TGJ): Thank you so much for hosting us! Can you tell us a bit about the mission of Wings of the Ocean?
Marc: Wings of the Ocean is a French NGO established to fight against plastic pollution in the ocean and its waterways. We do this in several ways — cleaning up pollution, educating the public on the importance of protecting the ocean, and advocating for alternatives to the use of plastic, demonstrating lower-waste ways of life.
TGJ: When did Wings of the Ocean get its start?
Marc: Wings of the Ocean was founded in 2018 by Julien Wosnitza, a former banker, and Sébastien Fau, a former marine captain, who met as volunteers of Sea Shepherd. The mission of Sea Shepherd, which is an international direct action ocean conservation movement, has always been to defend, conserve, and protect the ocean, with a focus on the creatures that live there. Ending plastic pollution is a part of protecting the ocean, but it wasn’t a core focus of the Sea Shepherd campaigns.
So Wings of the Ocean was born of discussions about how to clean up the oceans — how to stop plastic pollution at its source, how to engage everyday citizens in a visible way. The organization started with the purchase of the Kraken, our first boat, and we’ve been growing ever since. Today, Wings of the Ocean has two boats and three permanent land missions, as well as a seasonal mission to clean up sites in the South of France during the busy summer season.
TGJ: And how did you personally get involved with Wings of the Ocean?
Marc: I was volunteering with Sea Shepherd at the same time as Julien, and was captaining the Martin Sheen — the only sailboat that’s part of the Sea Shepherd fleet. It’s kind of a funny memory — I filled out the application to join, and I just remembered that the application asked all sorts of intense questions, like could you land a helicopter? No. Do you have any videography skills? Not really. Etc, etc. The only thing I really could do was sail — but I got the position.
Anyways, after several years of volunteering with Sea Shepherd, I got to talking with Martin and Julien, and I became more and more engaged with the topic of plastic pollution. I have a strong memory of sailing in the Maldives, where most of the waste gets incinerated, and wherever you landed, the air smelled like burning plastic. And most of that waste is coming from resorts and tourist infrastructure, single-use plastics where different solutions could be found. That was a really galvanizing moment for me.
So when Julien had the opportunity to come on board at Wings of the Ocean, I jumped on it, and I’ve been with the Scylla for the last eighteen months.
Sailing the Scylla
TGJ: What is the role of the Scylla in Wings of the Ocean?
Marc: The Scylla is our second ship in the fleet. With capacity for 14 passengers, it’s smaller than our first vessel — the Kraken, which holds 30 passengers, but it’s still an impressively sized boat.
The Scylla is one of our mission boats, and it’s been on a sailing trip in the North Atlantic since March 1st. This mission will last until October, when we go into the shipyard for the winter months. We do a short sail to a new destination, usually in France, around every two weeks. We sail to travel, but the time spent at port is really when Scylla gets to work.
At the core of the mission of the Scylla is education; it’s the first Wings of the Ocean Vessel that focuses on intervention and teaching at schools — from elementary to high school — as well as engaging with the general public.
TGJ: What is daily life like on the Scylla?
Marc: We have 14 people onboard the Scylla — twelve volunteers, myself, and Julie, who is the project coordinator. Each person has their own role to play in life aboard the ship, from cooking to managing social media, to planning special projects. The common thread we all have is that we’re all engaged in the fight against plastic pollution — and volunteers have been part of the ground missions of Wings of the Ocean before coming aboard.
A lot of our action is focused on engaging the citizens in the cities that we are visiting in the fight against plastic pollution. We open the boat to visitors, and take that as an opportunity to explain our mission to save the oceans. We host a tent at festivals. We occasionally do film screenings to deeper on an educational topic related to oceans and the environment. And of course we have our dépollution efforts, which are at the core of our mission.
TGJ: What does it mean, “dépollution”?
Marc: Dépollution isn’t just about cleaning up waste once it’s in the environment — it’s about working against the deeper problem.
The thing that’s important to understand with plastic pollution in the ocean is that it’s a source problem — ultimately, it needs to be tackled at the level of generating waste. No number of cleanups is going to be able to undo the damage that is done on a daily basis. Cleanups are part of what we do, but we are conscious to not promote the image that we are a ‘fail safe’ or will clean up what others, like private citizens or the municipality, should be responsible for.
That’s why Wings of the Ocean is focused not just on cleaning up, but really on re-educating society. We have to come into contact with people and let them know about the harmful effects of using plastic in their everyday, and we also have to engage them in taking action. And when we do these cleanups, they are very data-driven, and take the form of participatory science.
TGJ: What is participatory science?
Marc: At each of our cleanups, we sort and count the type of waste collected to better understand what are the key sources in a region — and then use this information to help work to stop these sources.
For example, in a region we recently cleaned with a nearby Heineken factory, there was an improbable amount of Heineken bottles in our collection. That leads to questioning, discussion with the enterprise and stakeholders, working on the problem at the source.
We share this data with an organization called MerTerre, which is collecting this data on a national level and aggregating it as an attempt to glean greater insights — many NGOs and even cleanups organized by groups of 3-4 individuals share their data. The idea is to create a type of scientific research that can leverage the power of everyday people to try and change, and to better understand the world around us.
What does the future hold for Wings of the Ocean?
Marc: We’re also starting to think about how we engage more in systemic topics — for example, we recently did a module on fast fashion, because that’s a significant part of the waste that we say in the supply chain. We’ll continue to incorporate these topics into our voyages, and continue to visit more and more ports of call across France and in time, additional stops in the region like neighboring ports in Spain. 2024 will be the fifth anniversary of Wings of the Ocean, so stay posted for more great things in store!
How can someone get more involved with the Wings of the Ocean mission?
You can check the calendar of events to learn more about actions going on across France. There are also ongoing opportunities to volunteer or contribute financially to our mission.
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Look forward to hearing about the trip. Can’t imagine months on a boat, even with grog.