Clear Blue Sea

With 8M metric tons of plastic annually entering the ocean, coastal communities are without capability to monitor and collect plastic waste to preserve their marine environments. Our solution is the Floating Robot for Eliminating Debris (FRED) – a semi-autonomous, solar-powered marine robot which collects ecosystem data through embedded sensors, while cleaning up floating plastic debris in rivers, bays, and oceans. Clear Blue Sea has developed a FRED Do-It-Yourself (FREDDY) Program so that any coastal locality can design and built their own FRED to address their local marine pollution issues. This will empower communities around the world to spread awareness while remediating their local marine environments polluted with plastic waste. Through the FREDDY Program, communities will receive a comprehensive Instructional Package that will enable them to build, test, and operate their own FRED, with educational, technical, and troubleshooting support from Clear Blue Sea marine scientists, robotics engineers, and STEM educators.  

Carbon-rich marine ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots are threatened by increasing volumes of plastic entering the oceans, continually accumulating in the gyres, and creating massive ocean garbage patches estimated to be the size of Texas. Over 500 species are injured or die through marine plastic ingestion or entanglement (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2016.)

In addition to ecological harm, plastic pollution damages communities dependent on tourism, shipping, and fishing.  In 2014, NOAA determined that reducing marine debris on Orange County beaches by 25% could save residents $32M over three months through costs associated with avoiding littered beaches (NOAA Marine Debris Division 2014). Without a proven, affordable, and implementable unmanned technology solution for marine debris cleanup, communities are left with labor-intensive beach cleanups, and ocean plastic continually washing up on their shores.  Clear Blue Sea wants to spark a Think Global, Act Locally, ocean conservancy movement by globally providing our FRED design at no expense, complete with an Instructional Package any school robotics club can implement with community support. 

Clear Blue Sea’s innovative solution is the Floating Robot for Eliminating Debris (FRED), an unmanned, solar-powered robot capable of monitoring ecosystems and cleaning up debris in rivers, bays, and oceans.

FRED has a simple but effective marine robot architecture comprised of dual hulls and an aluminum frame. This structure supports the debris collection subsystem made of booms used to guide floating plastic onto a conveyor belt and into a storage bin. FRED’s roof is made of solar panels, connected to batteries to store solar energy for FRED propulsion. Drone software enables remote control of FRED when close to shore, and autonomous navigation when further away. Embedded sensors capture weather, environmental, and ecosystem information for research purposes. Collected plastic is delivered to scientists for analysis and to sustainable upcycling centers for plastic re-use in commercial products.

All the components needed to construct and operate FRED are commercially-available, which reduces cost and engineering risk. These standard components include pontoons, solar panels, mesh, conveyor belts, wiring, drone software, and framing materials. FRED’s uniqueness is how these standard components are integrated to serve a unique purpose: marine ecosystem cleanup.

Our FRED Do-it-Yourself (FREDDY) Program will impact the health and vitality of marine ecosystems around the world, benefiting coastal residents, businesses, and tourists, as well as the fauna and flora residing in rivers, estuaries, bays, and oceans. For small, low-income communities suffering from marine debris, FRED represents a self-empowering, cost-effective solution to remediate the environmental and economic damages incurred by plastic pollution.

A second community which benefits from Clear Blue Sea’s programs to support ocean conservancy are over 300 members of the younger generations who have worked with us as interns and volunteers. After recruiting college-level engineering interns to work on the initial prototyping of FRED, Clear Blue Sea realized that high school, college, and post-grads would benefit from internships not only in engineering, but also in grant writing, business management, social media, website development, sustainability research and community initiatives, and educational programs. Clear Blue Sea sponsors interns from all local high schools and universities, either through 2-semester capstone programs or through individual internships. All interns are provided with boot camp to introduce them to the ocean plastics crisis, the Clear Blue Sea organization, our FRED innovation, project management, systems engineering, and collaborative teamwork. Interns are then assigned to specific projects with both individual and group project responsibilities. Experienced professionals volunteer as mentors throughout our projects to provide guidance and support. In the fall of 2020, a San Diego State University student engineering team successfully designed and built the first FRED Do-It-Yourself prototype (FREDDY #1), with engineering reviews, testing, and documentation from additional FREDDY support teams.

The next phase of our program will involve coordination with environmental managers to implement FREDDY #1 at the Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve in San Diego’s Mission Bay. Like many marine reserves, Kendall-Frost does not have a readily available cleanup and mitigation system for plastic pollution, except for periodic human cleanup efforts. Through conversation with the Kendall-Frost management team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, we learned that our FRED solution could be a particularly valuable management tool for the reserve because it remediates without disturbing the benthic ecosystem. We are now working directly with the UCSD Scripps Kendall-Frost leadership to plan FREDDY operations and accompanying Citizen Scientist educational programs. Once the FREDDY Implementation Program is scaled up, we plan to support individual FREDDY initiatives around the globe, as well as provide an online platform called Collaborative Ocean Remediation Assist Link (CORAL.) Each engineering team will access the CORAL platform to share customized FRED designs and lessons learned, while environmental managers will be able to share implementation tips and statistics on the volume and weight of plastic removed.

Plastic pollution poses a threat to carbon-rich marine ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots around the world. However, many communities do not have the means to effectively remediate or monitor plastic pollution in their rivers, bays, and oceans. The FRED Do-it-Yourself (FREDDY) Program will equip student engineering teams with an Instructional Package, providing a meaningful hands-on STEM Project as well as a community technological solution for capturing data on plastic pollution, all while cleansing the local environment of marine plastic.

Drawing from NASA's Technology Readiness Level measurement system, our solution is considered TRL Level 8 (NASA.) In fall 2020, a San Diego State University student engineering team built the first FRED Do-It-Yourself (FREDDY #1) in collaboration with Clear Blue Sea. Supported by additional Clear Blue Sea interns and engineering mentors, the team successfully demonstrated the viability of the design and completed the build process to create a 10-foot marine robot capable of collecting plastic debris. We now plan to implement FREDDY #1 in San Diego’s Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve through collaboration with UC San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Following implementation, we plan to conduct a comprehensive FREDDY Program review, with lessons learned incorporated into FREDDY design enhancements and updates to the FREDDY Instructional Package for broader distribution around the world.  

There are currently no wide-spread technology solutions for marine plastic pollution prevention and remediation. For example, Baltimore’s Mr. Trash Wheel is a stationary vessel capturing plastic pollution in the river before it enters the harbor. While locally effective, Mr. Trash Wheel cannot perform in ocean waters. The Seabin is another innovation, but is powered by gas motors and generates emissions while vacuuming floating plastic in limited areas.  

As previously described, our FRED Do-it-Yourself (FREDDY) Program can be catalytic in the sense of implementing a viable marine plastic cleanup solution with a THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY initiative. Imagine hundreds, and eventually thousands of coastal communities making their own FRED’s for local marine cleanup with a free Instructional Package provided by Clear Blue Sea. In addition, these hundreds of local projects will be able to collaborate with each other and receive mentoring from Clear Blue Sea through our website’s Collaborative Ocean Remediation Assist Link (CORAL). Also benefitting will be engineering students on global FREDDY Projects as well as hundreds of Clear Blue Sea interns and volunteers providing educational and mentoring support. This simple but compelling program is unique by:

• Implementing a new marine robot innovation for ocean cleanup
• Providing local student interns with a meaningful STEM Program
• Empowering global coastal communities to clean up their local marine plastic
• Facilitating global collaboration in remediating marine ecosystems with simple robotic solutions

Our solution currently serves more than 80 novice engineers and interns who gain engineering and project management experience through development of several FRED robots in San Diego County. Within 1 year, we plan to implement our FRED solution in Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve through a partnership with Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Our solution will serve to improve the coastal environment for roughly 3 million people who live in San Diego County and benefit over 35 million visitors that visit San Diego each year (San Diego Industry Research.) Our five-year goal is to implement the FREDDY Program globally. We anticipate working directly with hundreds of engineering teams and environmental manager groups to improve the environments for the nearly 2.4 billion people who live near the coast (United Nations.)

To measure the success of the FRED Do-It-Yourself (FREDDY) Program, Clear Blue Sea has established the following key metrics to be documented and reported on a regular basis:

Number of MOUs Signed. Our Contracts Manager will ensure that all individuals and organizations who decide to build a FREDDY for their local community agree to sign our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). MOUs will ensure our design is not used for commercial purposes, thus maximizing the number of participants in our collaborative CORAL website.

Number of Training Sessions Held. Clear Blue Sea will offer remote and on-site training, as requested, to support FREDDY teams who require extra assistance. We will track this to guarantee that the training program remains effective.

Number of FREDDYs In Development. Clear Blue Sea will track each FREDDY with a numbering system (i.e., FREDDY #1, FREDDY #2, etc.) This will aid CORAL website support and tracking. Remote support for each FREDDY will be provided by our staff at our San Diego, CA headquarters.

Number of Operational FREDDYs. Once a customized FREDDY has been completed and has started cleanup operations in its local marine environment, Clear Blue Sea will continue communications with its operators in order to document the amount and type of plastic it collects. Monthly collection reports will be requested from the operators.

Amount of Marine Plastic Collected by FREDDYs. Clear Blue Sea will estimate the total amount of marine plastics collected by all operational FREDDYs based on individual reporting from each FREDDY Project Team.

Clear Blue Sea leverages the talents of 80+ part-time interns and 20+ professional volunteers at any given time.

Program Manager and Executive Director - Susie Baer, Yale MBA/PMP, performs the PM role, leveraging 30 years of experience managing complex technology programs for NASA, DoD, and EPA.

Senior Engineer – David Dunn, BSME, San Diego State University, oversees design, development, and maintenance of our marine robots. David will manage engineering troubleshooting for global FREDDY Project Teams.

Partnership Manager – Karen Wilkins, BSAE, MBA, has 15 years of experience in the aerospace industry in project management, customer and product support, and contracts management, plus 5 years in nonprofit management. Karen will continue managing partner relationships under the FREDDY Program.

Scientific Data Manager– Sara Higgs, MS Marine Sciences, UC Santa Cruz, will oversee data collection and monitoring for the FREDDY Pilot Program

In addition, our Strategic Advisory Group provides independent, multi-disciplinary perspectives on key initiatives, critical issues, potential risks, and long-term planning:

Dr. Jennifer Brandon Price, Postdoctoral Fellow, Birch Aquarium at Scripps

Scott Cutrow, Associate, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP

Tony de Paolo, Senior Development Engineer, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Dr. Jiang Fan, Advanced Battery Innovator, President, American Lithium Energy

Melissa Fischel, Education and Workforce Development, The Maritime Alliance

Stewart Halpern, Executive Consultant

Heather Henter, Executive Director, Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Michael Hogel, President, Hoffmeyer Company

Dr. Gordon Hoople, Professor, Integrated Engineering, University of San Diego

Tom Lupfer, President, Clarity Design, USD Professor of Practice

Dr. Gwen Nero, Director of Corporate Affiliates, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Griffen Stapp, MBA CPA(IA), Controller/CFO, Gaia Medical Institute

Our solution’s Leadership Team embodies the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion as demonstrated by:

• Over 50% of our managers, interns, and volunteers are women
• Over 40% of our student interns come from minority communities
• We accept international students from countries ranging from Pakistan, India, Australia, Holland, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Canada.
• We transparently state our commitment to diversity on our website, on social media, and in corporate documentation

Clear Blue Sea would benefit immensely from any partnerships we can establish through MIT Solve. One specific barrier we face for implementation of the FRED Do-It-Yourself (FREDDY) Program is outreach. We need help identifying and connecting with groups that would be interested in building or implementing their own FRED marine robot. Being a part of the MIT Solve network could assist us in reaching our target groups and implementing the FREDDY Program on a global scale. Aside from increased exposure and potential partnerships, we would love to accelerate our FREDDY and FRED50 programs forward by connecting with an interested funding organization.

Financial. Clear Blue Sea, a volunteer run organization, relies on donations and grants for its funding. Through the COVID pandemic in 2020, individual donations were at an all-time low and we were not successful with our grant efforts. As a result, minimal funding for the survival of our warehouse and for basic FRED design improvements was secured by personal donations from a Clear Blue Sea co-founder. In late 2020, we initiated an online fundraiser and began a big push to write more grant proposals, but financial turnaround has been slow. Many corporate and philanthropic organizations have changed their funding strategies to focus on COVID relief and/or social injustice, and while these new goals are critical, it has made our search for ocean conservation-related funding even more difficult. We would appreciate assistance finding funding organizations that share our desire to empower young people to fight for the health of our oceans.

Public Relations and Product Distribution. Since its founding in 2016, Clear Blue Sea has been focused on the design and prototyping of our FRED robots. Now that we are ready to implement our bigger programs (i.e., FRED50) and share our FRED design with the world (i.e., FRED Do-it-Yourself), we need assistance getting our message out to the public, to the press, to funders, to robot enthusiasts, to ocean conservationists, and to government entities so we can all work together to cleanse the oceans, bays, coastlines, estuaries, and rivers around the world of plastic pollution.

APCO. Clear Blue Sea would benefit from working with MIT Solve Partner, APCO, to further develop the implementation plan for our FREDDY solution. Advisory assistance from APCO would help us immensely to overcome our outreach and partnership barriers.

MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. We are also interested in engaging with MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative's Plastics & Environment Program, specifically the Environmental Modeling Research Group, to gain more information on the flow and movement of plastic in rivers, estuaries, and oceans. Ideally, we want to determine global locations where our solution would have the largest impact.

MIT Edgerton Center Robotic Clubs. We are also interested in teaming with a robotics club at MIT to develop a FREDDY #2 to be implemented in Massachusetts. Specifically, we would like to team with the Marine Robotics Team, Design for America, Engineers without Borders, MIT Electronic Research Society, or the MIT Robotics Team.