Day 3: June 1

Kelli Stephens writes:

Alright, so orientation is over, and now…back to work! Today was our first day in the office and we got the full rundown on what our projects will be for the summer. We are basically divided in an economics team (responsible for sourcing the plastic in the Bay), a research team (responsible for testing where are the highest levels of plastic concentration), and team Alex (who will basically be functioning as our communications chair while researching grants and updating the website.) As this is our first day at work not much to report on progress…sooo I will fill the pages with some completely unrelated stories instead! Yay!

The first (and what I believe most important) thing every visitor to the San Francisco Bay Area should know is that – it is cold here! I repeat, in the month of June (a nationally recognized summer month) San Francisco has managed to make it feel like I am back in Massachusetts in the windy months of March and April. However, I have thankfully found my saving grace. In what I feel is likely an attempt by San Fran to get back on our good side (after such a low-blow with its deceptive weather). The Bay Area offers up an amazing array of restaurants to try out, so you better come here with an appetite (and loose-fitting pants). The variety of food here is just enough to leave you completely undecided on where you should go first. Just by writing about it, I am craving a Mexican burrito, or a Korean pancake, or Indian curry, or a steamed custard bun…seriously, this list can go on for pages. So instead, I will leave you with thoughts of all this delicious food supplemented, of course, with stomach-acid inducing images of these culinary masterpieces (just blocks from where I work!) while I get back to daily grind.

This is a Korean pancake: Jing had this for lunch at the Ferry Building Farmers' Market.

This is a steamed custard bun:

Day 2: May 31

Jing Chen writes:

While everyone was having their holiday, we went on a test tow today. John, a wind surfing instructor and commercial model, had kindly offered to tow us with his power boat. Lorraine showed us the Hobbie Cat built to collect plastics on the surface layer of the water.

Currently it still takes quite some work to launch the collection device, but we are working on improving it. The collection device is made of two 1.5 meter by 1.5 meters frames with three nets of different sizes on that. When launched into the water, current pushes through the nets to form a rectangular shape. Plastics of different sizes will be trapped at different layers. The net with the largest holes traps objects the size of tennis balls. The boat was pulling us at 3 knots/hr so that the current was not too strong for fish to swim out of the net. If they do accidentally enter the net, we would take them out.

The purpose of this tow was to show us how the Hobbie Cat plastic collection device works. We took turn to get on the Hobbie Cat with Lorraine.

Me and Pin on the Hobie Cat with Lorraine:

Kelli and Genea:

This is Alex and Lorraine getting the nets up:

Since Alex was the last one to get on the Hobbie Cat, she had some extra fun. With perfect cooperation between Lorraine and John, Alex got totally soaked on the way back to land.

Day 1: May 30

Jing Chen writes:

Hello everyone, we are the interns of Sea Scavenger this summer. We arrived last weekend and had our orientation. Lorraine and Monica had organized a Scavenger hunt for us to explore the city on Sunday. They dropped us off at the Coit Tower (See Kelli in front of the Tower). The view was gorgeous there. We walked all the way down to the Washington Square, down the Columbus Street, turned at the Transamerican Pyramid, passed the Ferry Building and back to Pier 40. It was a long but interesting walk.

Here is Kelli standing in front of Coit Tower:

This is the view from Coit Tower: