As SibenikIN writes on the 6th of December, 2019, Sibenik doctor Drazen Grgic has announced that he will attempt to cross the Atlantic ocean in a sailboat once again, heading from the Dalmatian city of Sibenik all the way to Brazil. He called the project ”Clean Sea, Clean Heart”, and it is primarily aimed at raising public awareness of the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s seas and oceans.
”Back in October 2018, I sailed from Sibenik to Brazil (Fernando de Noronha Islands) solo for the first time for the ”Clean Sea, Clean Heart” environmental campaign supported by the City of Sibenik, the Sibenik Tourist Board and D-Marin Mandalina, which was aimed at raising public awareness of the problems of marine pollution, primarily by plastic. In recent decades, we’ve witnessed a hitherto unknown problem that is increasingly taking place in all seas across the world and threatening to endanger entire ecosystems in the sea.
Plastic has become so cheap and accessible that nobody even thinks how dangerous it can be to the environment, and when thrown away as waste, one way or another, sooner or later, it reaches the sea where in the course of time it breaks down into microplastics, ie, tiny fragments of plastic which are bound by various toxins, which are then inadvertently fed to sea creatures and thus endanger their survival, and ultimately ours is at stake,” said Dr. Drazen Grgic when presenting his new venture.
As stated, Drazen Grgic had already embarked on this same adventure once but ended up turning around and returning home to Sibenik, primarily because of bad weather conditions in the Mediterranean.
Drazen stated that this season he has a new sailboat and some other extras that made it easier for him to manage it have been added, and he now has another crew member, Branimir Vlaj, a successful businessman and sea lover, who has been on and around ships and out at sea for more than half a century.
There have also been some new ropes, shackles and electronic devices installed for navigating and improving navigation safety. This year, the same route as the one attempted back in 2018 has been defined, from Sibenik down to Brazil, more precisely the Fernando de Noronha Islands, which is one of the most famous protected marine areas and the pearl of the Atlantic, something akin to Croatia’s gorgeous Kornati islands.
”We are sailing for the same purpose, to raise public attention of the need to preserve the sea, with a special emphasis placed on educating our young people who need to learn from a young age about the importance of preserving the sea as a habitat for living beings and not just as a resourcesfor economic exploitation,” reports Morski, transmitting Drazen’s words.
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