Race for Water team rescued in Indian Ocean

The Race for Water vessel, known as a trimaran, travelled some 32,000 miles before capsizing in the Indian Ocean Keystone

A Swiss-led team analysing trash in the world’s oceans has been rescued after their boat capsized on Saturday during a storm. The five-man crew is now aboard the “Pacific Marlin” rescue vessel in the Indian Ocean.

According a statement on the project’s websiteExternal link, the crew “stayed in turbulent conditions inside the overturned hull for more than 30 hours” before being rescued. They are currently evaluating whether their vessel can be retrieved.

The Race for Water team was on a global tour to survey the state of large floating islands of trash in the world’s oceans. Led by Swiss skipper Stève Ravussin, the project marked the first attempt to gather systematic and comparable data on all five of the places where trash tends to gather in the world’s oceans. Data was being sent back to a scientific team at Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)External link for analysis.

Race for Water had already covered some 32,000 miles (51,500 km), crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, before being struck by a storm with strong winds about 180 kilometres from the Diego Garcia archipelago.