Sample processing assistent at the Ocean Cleanup

Job description

In our mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, we rely on a thorough understanding of the ocean plastic pollution problem. The research team at The Ocean Cleanup aims at refining our understanding of the sources, transport, and fate of ocean and riverine plastics. An important aspect of our research is investigating emerging techniques used in the field to monitor plastic pollution. We use remote sensing to quickly and efficiently estimate floating plastic concentrations in both oceans and rivers. The resulting datasets require physical validation, or “groundtruthing”, to ensure our advancements in plastic detection techniques are accurate and reliable.  

You will be responsible for the analysis of net samples collected from the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok, to be processed in our laboratory, located in the Rotterdam zoo. Ultimately, your results will be applied to increase the accuracy of our monitoring systems and to better target our cleanup operations. 

Responsiblities:

• Processing of Manta trawl samples in our labs and contributing to data on the amount and type of plastics present in these samples.  
• Familiarize yourself with the different techniques used to extract and analyze plastics from trawl samples  
• Collect quantitative data on the marine organisms present in the trawl samples