CLEAR BLUE SEA
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Mission Statement
Short version: Cleansing the Oceans of Plastic Pollution
About This Cause
CLEAR BLUE SEA OVERVIEW Our Organization. Clear Blue Sea is a startup 501c3 nonprofit company established in San Diego in 2016. We are staffed with volunteers and student interns with minimal self-funding and donations. Some of our interns are paid on our behalf through philanthropic programs, while most interns receive academic credit for their work with Clear Blue Sea. Our Mission. CLEAR BLUE SEA’s mission is to cleanse the oceans of plastic pollution and support scientific research of the marine environment. Our Solution. To accomplish our mission, Clear Blue Sea has innovated a Floating Robot for Eliminating Debris (FRED) which is capable of capturing marine debris for both research and recycling purposes. FRED is an unmanned, solar-powered, semi-autonomous marine robot which is designed to collect plastic waste found in rivers, bays, coasts, and the ocean gyres. Why a Robot? In the vast Pacific, it is dangerous and costly to implement manned operations to clean up remote expanses of plastic garbage. However, unmanned robotic technologies provide a feasible opportunity with minimal risk to harvest ocean plastic debris and deliver it to recycling centers for sustainable disposition. Just as large trucks weekly collect our home garbage, large numbers of naval robots can perform the same function at sea. Using current technologies to build our innovative unmanned marine robots, Clear Blue Sea’s operations can sweep up massive amounts of floating marine debris from our oceans on a 365/24/7 basis without the need for on-site human operators. The collected plastic can be used for both scientific research as well as for recycling. Human-Caused Problems Require a Human-Driven Solution. Our mission is daunting, but Clear Blue Sea is committed to remediating marine ecosystems to help ensure the survival of our oceans. All daunting tasks on a global scale require first steps to establish a path forward. The challenge of removing tons of plastic in huge expanses of open ocean is undeniably a formidable one. Since humans have polluted our oceans with plastics, it is now our responsibility to clean it up. Complex Solutions Require Time for Development. Clear Blue Sea has developed a phased-development program plan to bring FRED research and remediation operations into being. During startup, Clear Blue Sea established our nonprofit 501c3 status, Board of Directors, management infrastructure, and initial engineering of FRED’s architecture and functional design. Clear Blue Sea is now in our Prototyping Phase and has completed prototyping of key FRED subsystems, and is designing our first fully functional FRED Prototype for testing off the coast of San Diego. Based on lessons learned, Clear Blue Sea will fine-tune the design and build of 5-10 FREDs for pilot operations around Hawaii. This is include establishing a Remote Operations Services Enterprise (ROSE), much like a mission control center, for semi-autonomous research and remediation operations. Once our concept of operations has been fully tested with production-ready systems and a large fleet of FREDs, Clear Blue Sea will implement FREDs in designated rivers, bays, coasts to prevent further plastic from reaching the deep seas, and in the gyres to cleanup existing plastic pollution. A Marine Circular Economy. Clear Blue Sea will provide FRED’s collection of marine plastics to scientists for research purposes and to sustainable recycling/upcycling organizations for repurposing. Until we learn how to biodegrade plastic, it is critical we continually leverage the value of plastics in their use and functions as a human-made resource. CLEAR BLUE SEA PERFORMANCE TO DATE Nonprofit Designation. On July 11, 2016 Clear Blue Sea received its IRS Tax Exempt Determination Letter recognizing our organization as a 501c3 nonprofit entity. Our EIN # is 81-3066017. Board of Directors. Our original Board was comprised of Jessica Gottdank, President and Treasurer; Susan Baer, Vice President, and Mark Ott, Secretary. Upon the resignation of Mark Ott from the Board, Clear Blue Sea added Joyce Tang, Emilio Vargas, and Tim Perry to the Board for a 5-person governance entity. We meet bi-annually per our By-Laws and the Board ensures that Clear Blue Sea complies with all federal and state compliance requirements for nonprofit entities. Financial Management. Clear Blue Sea established its bank account with Wells Fargo to enable receipt of donations and expenditure of business expenses. We have submitted tax returns for each fiscal year and have maintained a positive financial position since Clear Blue Sea’s inception. Organizational Structure. As a startup organization, Clear Blue Sea’s management team members serve multiple roles in a functionally flat organizational structure. Susan Baer serves as Executive Director and Program Manager; Jessica Gottdank serves as Business Manager and Project Manager; Tim Perry serves as our Chief Engineer, and Darcy Cook serves as our Development Director. The management team receives expert guidance from a diverse set of science and business advisers. Volunteer and Intern Staffing. The Clear Blue Sea management team and our advisers perform on a volunteer basis. Our projects are staffed with student interns at the high school, college, and university levels. Most student interns receive academic credit for their project work at Clear Blue Sea, although some receive funding through philanthropic and governmental grants allocated to our organization. Clear Blue Sea intentionally staffs its projects with student interns to achieve the following resource objectives: • Younger generations tend to have more passion for the environment, more creative ideas for addressing global problems, and greater propensity for collaboration • With plastic pollution increasingly worse and requiring ongoing remediation throughout their lifetimes, it is critical that younger generations learn the extent of ocean plastics and become involved in remediating this crisis • Through internships at Clear Blue Sea, interns are effectively given real-life experiences in project management, systems engineering, creative problem solving, and team collaboration which is far more valuable than typical internships having limited roles and responsibilities Research on Ocean Plastics and Marine Robots. Clear Blue Sea has completed extensive review of scientific, governmental, and industry research on the extent of ocean plastic and its damage to the environment and blue tech industries. We spoke to many experts from academia, philanthropic organizations, advocacy groups, regulatory agencies, and technologists to gain their insights on our proposed FRED solution for advanced research and remediation of ocean plastics. Marine Robot Technology Baseline. Clear Blue Sea’s conceptual design for FRED is a customized catamaran which is solar-powered and semi-autonomous; moves through the ocean collecting plastic pollution at a slow speed of 2 knots to minimize encounters with marine animals; and harvests floating plastic and debris using a simple conveyor belt, boom, and bin system. In the summer of 2018, we prototyped small-scale versions of FRED’s Solar Power and Debris Collection subsystems, while designing small scale complete prototypes of FRED for construction by June 2019. Blue Tech Incubator Member. Clear Blue Sea has been a member of The Maritime Alliance’s Blue Tech Incubator located in Dentons Law Offices in San Diego, CA since the fall of 2017.