The team of rowers consists of three women (Jess, Caroline, and Suze) who live in London and have been busy training for this endeavor for weeks. The trio call their expedition the Status Row, and while they are taking part in a race across the Atlantic, their ambitions are much higher than simply going from the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain to Antigua in the Caribbean, covering some 3000 miles (4825 km) in the process.
According to the Status Row website, more than 8 million tons of plastic goes into the ocean every year. That equates to 6340 plastic bottles each and ever second. Those plastics are often eaten by fish, which are also making their way back into our diet as well. It is a horrible situation that is not only killing off marine life at an alarming rate, but is having an impact on the foot supply for millions of people around the globe too.
To help fight this problem the three ladies are hoping to raise £100,000 ($131,300) for the Marine Conservation Society, a nonprofit in the U.K. that is leading the charge to protect the oceans, our shores, and the wildlife that lives in from this thread. The message is a simple one, refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle.
You can find out more about their plans on the Status Row website, where you'll also find a countdown clock to the start of the race, as well as a disturbing ticker that shows the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean since you first started viewing the page. It is a sobering reminder that this is a significant threat to our planet and we need to act soon to protect our oceans.
Find out more here.