Restoring the Ocean

Azure Alliance’s “Marine Vacuum Cleaner”

Tina Xie　/　photos Kent Chuang　/　tr. by Scott Williams

June 2021

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In October 2020, when Taiwan’s Azure Alliance launched a fundraising campaign aimed at removing trash from the ocean, the public responded. With more than 5000 people donating in excess of NT$15 million to the endeavor, the alliance vowed to go every step of the way to achieving the campaign’s goal. For all that the marine environment is worsening, at least there are people acknowledging the problem and attempting to do something about it.

On February 27, 2021, three women from the Azure Alliance began a one-month survey of Taiwan’s fishing harbors, starting at Wushi Harbor in Yilan County. Their goal was to develop an understanding of the physical infrastructure of the harbors and the methods they used to manage trash. This data would then be used to forecast problems that the alliance’s “marine vacuum cleaner”—more formally known as a “trash skimmer”—might encounter when deployed. The team was also interested in uncovering the origins of the ocean trash in each location.

courtesy of Team Azure

A Taiwan-wide survey

Wushi Harbor is relatively deserted at 9 a.m., with only a speckling of tourists and anglers, as well as a few commercial fishermen sorting through their catch. Azure Alliance CEO Chen Szu-ying, secretary-general Tseng Yu-ting, and head of operations Yen Hsiang-lin look a bit out of place here with their notebooks and cameras.

“Note the wind,” Chen tells her teammates, pointing to a flapping flag and reminding them of the wind direction’s influence on where trash accumulates. She then observes the kinds of trash floating on the water’s surface. Tseng spots a trashcan, and is thrilled to see a warehouse with recyclables arranged neatly inside. In addition to noting what they see for themselves, team members fill out their picture by interviewing workers on some of the fishing boats.

The upbeat Chen slowly guides her conversation with a fishermen from the composition of his catch to seasonal variations in harbor trash. “Is there more trash during any particular period?” A sturdy and tanned middle-aged man, the fisherman pauses, seemingly finding this to be a sensitive subject. “Do you catch trash in your nets?” “I don’t see any trashcans around here. Where do you throw your trash?” The fisherman laughs, “No, we don’t catch trash. We throw our trash away on land and someone sweeps it up.” His tongue-in-cheek response suggests that some local fishermen remain unaware of the ocean trash crisis.

When conducting its survey, Azure divides the harbor into several zones, and then carefully searches for things their trash skimmer needs to operate: a power source, water to hose off the device once its work is done, a boat ramp to get the device into the ocean, and a strong WiFi signal so that it can be remotely controlled. In addition to conducting an environmental survey, team members ask locals living near the harbor how they feel about and dispose of trash. “Our team isn’t picking up trash,” explains Chen. “We’re trying to analyze it.”

When the Azure Alliance surveyed Taiwan’s harbors, it made sure to ask the people living nearby for their views on trash.

Pursuing a dream

Chen used to work with the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Ocean Data Bank. She quit her job there prior to undertaking the fishing harbor survey because she wanted to devote more time to the alliance. Her long-term scholarly observations of the ocean had confronted her with stark evidence of the marine environment’s deterioration. Unwilling to stand by as that process continued, she started development on a “crazy” project: creating a harbor trash skimmer.

Her determination to work on behalf of the oceans attracted like-minded partners. Yen, the alliance’s operations manager, was previously with the social enterprise information platform Social Enterprise Insights. Well versed in fundraising, Yen took charge of communicating with backers when she joined the team. A smiling Chen recalls how their colleague Lin Chia-yin came to join the group: “A friend of mine noticed some trash on the water while visiting the Milk Sea off Yilan’s Guishan Island, and realized we were doing something important. She offered us her management expertise, and is now our head of finance.”

Azure is constantly exploring the possibilities for new projects and even participated in a startup contest. While Azure didn’t win, NTU professor Lee Jiren, who hosted the competition, told the team that so long as they were well prepared they would find plenty of support when the world was ready for their device. Several other people from a variety of backgrounds recommended that they continue to refine their device, and that they release their product specifications when they were ready to go to market as a means of attracting investment. Largely unfamiliar with how markets work, the Azure team found the advice valuable and began to make plans to raise funds from people who shared their vision.

Continuous improvement

Azure has mapped out four generations of development for its “ocean vacuum.”

The first consisted of an underwater pump and a conveyor belt that sucked up surface trash and deposited it in a basket. Its weakness was that its operations were limited to a corner of a harbor; it couldn’t clean the whole harbor.

For the second generation, Azure introduced a remote control system that enables the device to operate over a larger area.

It sees the third generation as patrolling harbors automatically. Data from the second generation has shown where wind and currents cause trash to accumulate in different seasons. The third generation will use this information and an onboard GPS system to position itself in the right part of a harbor.

The fourth generation will take advantage of the “Internet of Vessels,” drawing on Internet of Things (IoT) technology and computers operating in the background to enable a single operator to simultaneously manage cleaning operations in two or three harbors.

Azure’s fundraising page similarly breaks their project down into four stages, ranging from hardware construction and “the development of clean-up programs for different harbors” to “establishing demonstration harbors and adding testing harbors.” Just as Professor Lee said, the project has attracted many supporters since it got underway, including E-One Moli Energy Corp., which has become an important R&D partner.

The alliance’s device is currently evolving from the second generation to the third, with the group working on modifying the hull to perform better in terms of fluid mechanics; adding motive power, communications and remote control; and putting a camera in the bow to capture images for analysis.

Team members confirm that a harbor has the onshore electrical connections that they need to power their “ocean vacuum.”

Unstoppable passion

Taiwan’s awareness of ocean conservation is a recent phenomenon: our Ocean Conservation Administration was only established in April 2018. Even now, when the Azure Alliance, which was founded in 2017, talks to the government about cooperation, it often has to spend time explaining its goals. Chen slaps the table in frustration, telling us: “The government thinks that we’re collecting trash. What we’re really doing is analyzing the trash, figuring out how to turn trash into numbers, numbers into data, and data into evidence.” Happily, a number of agencies have come to understand Azure’s goals and provided support. For example, the Maritime and Port Bureau gave harbors advance notice of Azure’s survey, ensuring that the alliance faced no obstacles while onsite.

Faced with both positive and negative responses to her efforts, Chen says, “Nobody is going to slow me down when I’m certain that I’m on the right path.”

Azure Alliance operations director Yen Hsiang-lin (far right), CEO Chen Szu-ying (second from right) and secretary-general Tseng Yu-ting (second from left) visited harbors in person looking for sources of ocean trash.

Communication is the goal

Azure’s focus in 2021 is to continue the development of its trash skimmer. In 2022, it plans to establish demonstration programs in the Bitou and Yong’an Fishing Harbors, and to train the agencies it is working with to operate its device. Azure will then hold further talks with fishermen and government agencies. Chen says that a study by Greenpeace Taiwan and the Society of Wilderness found that 50% of Taiwan’s marine debris was concentrated along 10% of its shoreline. She believes that making the government aware of this kind of information would enable it to make more effective use of limited resources. “It isn’t just about cleaning up trash. We also want to explain why we need to clean up trash. If the ocean becomes full of trash, fishermen could become unable to catch fish and be driven out of business.”

Azure is also trying to keep trash out of the ocean by stopping it at its source. The group discovered that in the summer foreign-national fishing boat workers are unable either to go to sea or to leave their harbors. Since harbors lack drinking fountains and garbage cans, these workers often throw away water bottles wherever they happen to be when they finish with them, creating litter. This observation led the group to recommend that the relevant agencies upgrade harbor facilities and open a dialogue with foreign workers. “We will be working with One Forty [an NGO supporting migrant workers] to find environmentally minded interpreters who can approach their compatriots about the issue in a non-confrontational manner.”

Azure finished its harbor survey in late March having learned that much of the trash in Taiwan’s harbors washes in inadvertently. The survey also helped it identify factors contributing to the trash problem. The group hopes that its expertise on harbor environments will enable it to generate appropriate and feasible solutions to the environmental issues facing fishing harbors.