Introducing SeaCleanMachine

Welcome, please find a natty website that is home to the Sea Clean Machine, a little engine with the power to make a difference.

We live in an incredible modern world built on an amazing array of technologies all here to help us in our daily lives. Yet sometimes, when we are done with all this stuff, we get careless and discard or lose our stuff so it ends up collecting in little quiet corners of the world.

The Seacleanmachine is a`ut turning back this tide so that the lost and forgotten gets recognised and found. Then we can go on to collect what we have seen and take away all this litter that mars this beautiful world.

The seacleanmachine is a simple way to record litter in the sea and then collate the data in a single point. You can swim your favourite wreck or reef, remember any debris seen and then click on the map when you get back to the surface. Your sightings will be gathered, sorted and shown on the map and then the planning can start as how best to remove the objects.

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Finding our feet

Here at seacleanmachine we are just finding our feet with our new baby so our first job is to test the inner workings of things to make sure that everything works in the real world.

We have built two maps for two Scapa wrecks, the Brummer and the Kronprinz Wilhelm, which we will open up to the community so you can start reporting the litter you find. The reports will be collected, assessed and used to form the plans for the bigscapacleanup week in September. Then a team of crack frogmen will swim the wreck and safely remove as much of the reported rubbish as possible.

The paint on the seacleanmachine is still not dry so we know we will find glitches and gremlins. Everything will be prodded, pushed and pulled to make sure we have ironed out all the bugs to follow through all the processes as best we can. Found a bug? Have an idea? Please feel free to let us know. This is an engine is powered by a community wanting to get involved.

Learning to run

The seacleanmachine is not just about Scapa Flow. After the bigscapacleanup week, we will reach a fork in the road and hopefully release a fully functioning app back into the community that helped to build, test and shape it. With luck this little machine will be able to swim down river into the big sea and thrive on its own.

We are working hard with our friends at Ghostfishing UK so they can reskin the seacleanmachine with maps of their own and use it for sites all around the British coastline.

Here in Scapa, we will continue to build on our own clear up efforts, polishing and developing the seacleanmachine and make it better.

However, we would like to see this as the first step in a bigger project too. With the anniversary of the scuttle fast approaching in 2019, the seacleanmachine will form the early beginnings of the BattleshipExplorer project: we are hoping to map a battleship using an underwater volunteer army to take pictures for a photogrametry 3d model.

The ideas that the seacleanmachine throws up are bigger than we can think of so we would like to hear the thoughts of others too. Maybe you are an underwater archaeologist that can use this app? Maybe a seasearcher looking to report on an area? Get in touch, we would love to share. The road ahead holds an exciting adventure...

Meet the Team

Bob Anderson

MV Halton

Bob drives a dive boat, the Halton, and has a long standing passion for Scapa Flow. He believes that the wrecks are important not just because they are ships that will never be seen again but because they are a memory of a time gone past. We are custodians of a snippet of history and he believes we should work hard to respect our heritage and our environment. Picking up litter may be a small step in the big scheme of things but if we all take our own small steps, before long there is an army marching.

Steve Jakeway

Illustrator and Creative

Steve has the kind of eyes that see what we all see through but has the talent to make it all come out through his fingers, down a pencil and into a picture. Without out his creative input, the team would struggle to turn a dark gloomy seabed into the vibrant images that you see before you. He is a keen diver, driven by the same need to play a part and so loves the thought that he can clean the seabed with his pencil too.

Mike Postons

3deep Media

Sometime sooner or later, we need a man to lift the bonnet, roll up his sleeves and get his hands oily. The man behind the technology is Mike Postons a dabhand at the keyboard. But here is a someone with more than just bits and bytes, here is clever clogs who can translate the lines of code into a breathing machine and make it sing. Here is someone who sees both sides of the coin, be that the ones and zeros in the ether or the wealth of the sea.

Rich Walker

GUE Instructor

Rich is an instructor by trade but a diver by instinct. As a man that makes his living under the waves he understands first-hand how important it is to have a big tidy up in the office every now and then. More than that, he brings with him the team ethos and the skills to work together and solve this problem as a unified team, making light work with many hands.

Joanne Porter

Marine Scientist

Behind the scenes is a strong foundation in science and a need to base our efforts on measureable data. Dr Jo Porter works at Heriot Watt University and adds a large dollop of practical hands on science to the project so that we know what we find, how to record it and make sure we add our data to the scientific record. But behind it all, Jo is driven by the same passion for the sea that we all feel.