Fair enough, that’s your opinion. The internet is big enough all kinds of writing styles, and what may not resonate with you, may click with others. Science communication is not one-sized fits all and I’ll respectfully continue writing in my voice.

While I have no doubt that you are well -respected in your field, like many scientists, your communication and PR skills with the general public could use a little work.

Do you frequently use the F bomb in your peer-reviewed scientific papers?

Being harsh, sarcastic and dismissive of others is not going to win you much appeal with the general public–if in fact, that is who you’re trying to win over.

Boyan, your project still seems to completely ignore any potential impact to marine life. Why won’t you address this problem?

Although I admit, after listening to the mooring vandalism horror stories at work recently, the phrase “no-go area for non-authorized vessels” made me chuckle/weep.

Always happy to see people thinking along with us, indeed it helps keeping the team sharp which brings us forward.

As to your questions:

“Are you using Ro-Booms?”
The prototype we deployed two weeks ago is developed in conjunction with DESMI, who are indeed also a manufacturer of proven oil spill response equipment. It’d have been great if we could have used off-the-shelf equipment (it would have saved our engineers a lot of time), but unfortunately that option wouldn’t have been able to cope with the loads (80MT for the prototype), and also those booms aren’t designed for permanent deployment. On the plus side, we were able to build on their decades of experience when it comes to rubber composition, hinges, etc. but still air chambers, the load-carrying ‘undercarriage’, the electronics and bridles etc had to be engineered from scratch. Note the transportation drum is in fact a refurbished oil boom drum, hence the text.

“why are they black?”
The black colour ensures the highest UV stability for the type of synthetic rubber used. The barrier is fitted with reflective strips to improve visibility. Note that the prototype deployment site itself is marked with 4 cardinal marking buoys, and is a no-go area for non-authorized vessels.

“Have they issued a notice to mariners?”
Certainly, the Dutch government is a close collaborator to the prototype project. The Notice to Mariners can be found here: https://www.defensie.nl/binaries/defensie/verzamelingen/berichten-aan-zeevarenden/2016/19/wkly-y2016-w19-baz180-191.pdf (page 8)

“Are these the booms that will be used in Japan? The design is different every time”
The design of the barriers continues to change over time, which is inherit to the iterative nature of the project. We test to learn, to then be able to improve the design, etc etc. So we cannot guarantee the barriers in future projects will look exactly like the one we have in the North Sea right now, but the lessons we gather from this testing will result in the design used for the next iteration(s). Note that the tests at Deltares and MARIN were hydrodynamic tests, and didn’t require the level of design detail that is required for real offshore deployments.

Side note on the still taken from the MARIN video: what you see there is, as you correctly imply, behaviour we don’t want to see with our system. However, the test case we are looking at in that video is actually of the highest pre-tension we tested during that test campaign, simulating a tension that is way higher that we will realistically encounter in the Pacific. Also note that MARIN was a very conservative setting, since it’s hard to properly scale down stiffness because it scales with the 4th power. And higher stiffness means less favourable behaviour in our case. In realistic cases, the barrier performed nominally. The MARIN report can be downloaded on our website.

“Will you also be doing plastic capture efficiency tests?”
Yes

“How did they get funding EUR 0.5 Million from the Dutch Government?”
We applied for an ‘innovation subsidy’ through the regular channels of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment and the Ministry of Economic Affairs. I don’t know whether the documents related to this subsidy are online.

Hope this helps and please don’t hesitate to contact us in case any more questions pop up!

Yours
Boyan

Are you a real person?

So it seems the oil booms as currently deployed will collect only large floating objects?

The oil booms that were just deployed are too short to affect this, however the booms proposed for Japan and the Pacific are not.