Mobula 8: heading to Indonesia!

The SeaCleaners team is proud and happy to announce the departure of the Mobula 8, our versatile and innovative clean-up boat designed for calm waters, to its first area of action, Bali and the Denpasar region.   

The Mobula 8 left the port of Le Havre on Thursday morning on board the container ship MSC Laurence and is now heading for Indonesia.
You can follow its progress in real time here.

This departure is the reward for almost a year of hard work with local and diplomatic administrations in order to open new routes for Franco-Indonesian collaboration.    

Indeed, if the agreement in principle and the willingness of the Indonesian authorities to welcome The SeaCleaners to collect waste from its rivers and coasts have been established for a long time, it has been necessary in practice to overcome some administrative obstacles and to face many twists and turns to allow this departure!  

Beyond the perseverance of the whole team, it was necessary to mobilise and solicit :
– the services of the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Investment
– French maritime affairs and the French Embassy in Indonesia
– The importer of the boat, which will also provide the local crew
– Customs in Surabaya, the Indonesian port of call for the Mobula before it arrives in Bali
– and many others!  

Now, a few more weeks of sea travel await the Mobula 8 with an expected arrival in Bali in mid-November and a subsequent commissioning.  

The Mobula 8 will join our teams and partners of our MAPP (Mobula Against Plastic Pollution) programme – a global programme dedicated to the collection and management of plastic waste, awareness raising and training of local communities, technical assistance for the optimisation of the value chain, and scientific research – of which it is the standard bearer through its targeted curative action.  

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the key players with whom we team up on a daily basis in this ambitious programme, which aims to interweave complementary operational solutions for better local waste management: the Indonesian Navy, Gili Eco Trust, Peduli Alam, le Rotary Club Bali Pecatu, Valorplast, Eco Bali, Bali Waste Cycle, etc., at our side to fight plastic pollution concretely on the ground.   

In order to prepare these missions and to concretize months of exchanges, preparations and contacts with local actors, representatives of The SeaCleaners went to Bali for a month in September.
➡️ Discover the report of this preparatory mission in this article.
➡️ Follow the actions of our partners in Bali all this week on our social networks and in this article