An unlikely partnership for marine health
What do a whale detection company and a fashion brand have in common? LOTS, it turns out! I met Nina, CEO of Lantinga Vita, at a B Corporation breakfast, and with ethics aligned and a shared passion for helping the ocean, a collaboration was born.
Safety first!
A natural first step was providing Whale Seeker employees with masks made from ECONYL®, a fabric made from waste including ghost fishing nets from the oceans. No waste. No new resources. A better ocean environment and whales saved in the process! What could be better?!
A few facts about ECONYL®:
For 10,000 tonnes of raw material, 70,000 barrels of crude oil and 57,100 tonnes of CO2 emissions are saved.
Ghost fishing gear represents approximately 47% of plastic waste in our oceans.
Healthy Seas protects our marine ecosystem by removing ghost fishing gear, which is transformed into ECONYL® yarn.
Next step? Data.
The platforms that Whale Seeker builds are made to get data to people who need it when they need it. Timely info to the right people is our jam! How is filling this data-gap helping? Well, people need an easy option for reporting ghost gear (where is it? how big is it? how deep is it?) and then transmitting that information to the divers who are going to retrieve it. This is the first step in ridding the oceans of these harmful plastics. Remember, when fishing nets are abandoned, they don’t stop fishing! Next, what to the divers do with the nets? It’s great they are out of the ocean, but the goal is not the landfill, either. We want to help track options for recycling and contribute to the circular economy here in Canada and globally.
Soon…
Whale Seeker, Lantinga Vita, and several other collaborators will participate in panel discussions, via international conferences later this year, about how to bring this circular economy to Canada through fashion. We will let you know once the details are shored up so people know how to tune in. We are very excited to participate in this partnership with such innovative and driven thinkers. The world’s trickiest problems can be solved, the solutions may just require some unlikely partnerships and out-of-the-box thinking! Sign us up.
