In two days Ocean Tramp leaves Ushuaia for the Falklands / Malvinas. Along the way we will sail along the Beagle Channel, Straits of LeMaire and the Southern Ocean. We hope to stop along Peninsula Mitre and Isla de los Estados before arriving in Stanley. For this transit we are excited to have Abby Barrows onboard. She is the Microplastics Principal Investigator for Adventure Scientists. We are doubly excited to have her onboard, as we have been collecting samples for this inaitve for the last few years and have been sending our samples to Abby to analyze. Learn More about Abby below!
Abby Barrows
Microplastics Principal Investigator
Adventure Scientists
College of the Atlantic Graduate student
Abby grew up on a Maine island and had the ocean as her playground. From a young age she has loved exploring the outdoors. Her passion for travel brought her to the University of Tasmania, where she earned a degree in Zoology with a focus on Marine Biology.
After spending time mapping the canopy of old-growth temperate rainforests and trapping Tasmanian devils she went on to design and manage a pioneering study of seahorse diversity, distribution and trade in Papua New Guinea. She published two academic papers on the research. She has traveled the South Pacific by boat, trekked the Himalaya, explored the Middle East, researched sea turtles in Uruguay and Costa Rica, dived Mediterranean wrecks, rehabilitated big cats in the Amazon, and worked aboard a schooner in New England and the Canadian Maritimes. She saw one thing in common everywhere: plastic pollution.
Abby has been directing microplastic research since 2012, initiating the first baseline data map of microplastic pollution distribution in Maine. She used this research to help push through plastic reduction legislation and recently prepared the Maine Marine Debris Resolve that was drafted into law in March 2016. Abby currently manages a lab for Adventure Scientists where she processes and analyzes international water samples, enabling a glimpse at the extent of plastic contamination in remote, understudied ocean and fresh waters.
In 2016 she began the Graduate program at College of the Atlantic. She is greatly strengthening her microplastic research through the resources provided by COA.
Stay tuned during the journey for updates on our sampling!