DeepGreen, a Canadian company that supplies the world with metals needed for economic growth and clean technologies, is contributing to the health of the oceans by being a part of The Ocean Cleanup (TOC) project to remove plastics from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch over the next five years.

DeepGreen, along with the global shipping company Maersk, is contributing to this historic project by offering The Ocean Cleanup foundation the Maersk Launcher to launch its plastics cleanup project in San Francisco Bay. The Launcher is under lease by DeepGreen and will be used to carry out survey and scientific work on the deep ocean floor to recover polymetallic nodules that contain a rich supply of cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese—metals required to power the green infrastructure from electric cars to wind turbines.

"DeepGreen believes the health of the oceans is essential to our future and that is why we are doing our part to assist The Ocean Cleanup in its visionary mission," said Gerard Barron, CEO of DeepGreen, in a statement. "We envision the oceans becoming an important source of metals for our future, providing a much cleaner alternative to land-sourced metals. As a company, we see it as our duty to not just harness cutting-edge science and technology to harvest ocean metals with minimal environmental impact but also improve the health of our oceans through our other activities."

The Maersk Launcher and its crew will be instrumental in deploying TOC's unique system designed to capture a significant portion of plastic debris in the central Pacific and reduce manmade pollution that poses an environmental threat to marine wildlife.

"I have spent my life studying and working to protect the ocean,” said DeepGreen Chief Ocean Scientist and Oceanographer Greg Stone in a statement. “In more than 10,000 dives, in nearly every ocean on the planet, I've spent about two years under water, and I know first-hand we have a lot of work to do to improve the health of the oceans. At DeepGreen, we think about this systematically. Taking macro-plastics out of our oceans is a step in the right direction, and we are excited to support TOC."

"The ocean has the answer in the form of polymetallic nodules,” he adds. “By collecting them from a relatively small part of the deep ocean's abyssal plain, more than a thousand kilometers from shore and four kilometers below the surface, I believe we can find a bountiful supply of the metals we need for our future without major impacts on the ocean's health."