The Mona GeoInformatics Institute (MGI) has partnered with The Ocean Cleanup since 2020, as part of the national initiative to clean up the Kingston Harbour in Jamaica. The Kingston Harbour is important to Jamaica due to its role in shipping, logistics, business, and commerce, and also in disaster risk management and climate resilience. Inflows of solid waste into the Kingston Harbour have direct implications for nutrient imbalance, negative impacts on marine biodiversity, suffocation of marine species by plastics and the breakdown of PET bottles and other plastics to create the microplastics problem.
The Ocean Cleanup has embarked on a solid waste remediation project in the Kingston Harbour that prevents garbage from entering the marine environment. The Ocean Cleanup has achieved this by engineering Interceptor Barriers (booms) that have been installed at various gullies. These gullies were selected due to the high volume of solid waste which is deposited from the gully outflows as well as the high feasibility of erecting the Interceptor booms around the mouths of the gullies. The garbage that is captured by these barriers is collected by the Interceptor Tender which is a small barge, which then transports this waste to the NEPA-approved offloading site where it is sorted and disposed of.
As part of this collaborative agreement with The Ocean Cleanup, MGI is providing environmental profiling, data, and field monitoring support through hydro-meteorological, terrain and environmental data collection including UAV-based (drone) gully mapping, video footage of gullies, volumetric calculations, garbage stockpile assessments, along with regular general gully profiling and monitoring.
