The Ocean Cleanup, the international non-profit with the mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, has announced, at the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC), its plan to rapidly expand its work to intercept and remove ocean-bound plastic pollution.

The 30 Cities Program will scale the organization’s proven Interceptor™ solutions across 30 key cities in Asia and the Americas, aiming to eliminate up to one third of all plastic flowing from the world’s rivers into the ocean before the end of the decade.

This evolution follows five years of learning through pioneering deployments across 20 of the world’s most polluting rivers and represents a key next step in the organization’s mission and the global fight against ocean plastic pollution.

With the 30 Cities Program, The Ocean Cleanup will transition from single river deployments to citywide solutions, tackling the main plastic emitting waterways within each selected city. This follows a key learning from deployments in Kingston, Jamaica, which showed it is possible to scale faster when projects encompass whole cities, as the same set of partners can be involved with all deployments.

To date, The Ocean Cleanup has already prevented 29 million kilograms of trash from reaching the ocean. The organization currently intercepts an estimated 1–3 percent of global river-borne plastic emissions. With the first 20 river deployments close to being fully operational, it is now poised to reduce the plastic pollution flowing into the ocean from rivers by up to a third.

“When we take on an entire city, instead of individual rivers, we can scale faster, reduce costs, and maximize impact,” said Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. “Our analysis shows that strategically deploying Interceptors across just 30 carefully chosen cities can stop up to a third of river plastic pollution worldwide. This is the next big leap toward our ultimate goal of a 90  percent reduction in global ocean plastic pollution.”

City-by-city: a Faster Path to Scaling

Using the latest scientific modeling and on the ground experience, The Ocean Cleanup identified 30 major plastic polluting coastal cities which include:

• Panama City, Panama – First deployment to go live in the coming months.
• Mumbai, India – Mapping of all waterways completed; preparations for first deployments underway.

Furthermore, the organization is developing plans to expand on its existing work to all polluting rivers in:

• Manila, Philippines; Montego Bay, Jamaica; Jakarta, Indonesia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand and Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Other cities will be announced once the necessary partnerships and agreements are in place. Planning and fundraising activities are underway for all 30 cities. To realize these ambitious plans, the organization is currently also expanding its engineering and operational capacity.

Data Driven Restoration at Scale

Before Interceptors are deployed, each city project begins with an intensive analysis phase. Aerial drones, AI-powered image analysis, and GPS-tagged “dummy” plastics are used to chart every visible waterway and track how waste moves from streets to sea. These real-time insights guide optimal Interceptor placement and provide a public baseline against which progress can be measured.

Alongside intercepting new plastic, the 30 Cities Program will also remove debris from nearby coasts, mangroves, and coral reefs. This twin-track approach—shutting off the tap while clearing the legacy pollution—enables The Ocean Cleanup to achieve long-term impact, which includes the restoration of fish nursery habitats, boosting coastal tourism, and strengthening of natural storm surge defenses for local communities. Alongside local partners, the organization also advocates for improvements in waste management and awareness raising amongst communities.

Completing the First 20 Rivers

While laying the foundation for the 30 Cities Program, The Ocean Cleanup is also nearing completion of its first 20 river projects. The next landmark achievement—expected as soon as the second half of this year—is in the western Caribbean, where the team aims to resolve the plastic pollution problem in the Gulf of Honduras by intercepting the trash feeding into this body of water.

A Stepping Stone Toward a 90  Percent Reduction

The 30 Cities Program represents the first major scaling step in The Ocean Cleanup’s journey to eliminate 90 percent of floating ocean plastic pollution. In parallel, efforts are continuing to remove plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Whilst extraction operations are currently on hiatus, work to deploy cutting edge technologies to map the “hotspots”, or areas of intense plastic accumulation, in order to make future extractions more efficient and economical, is ongoing.

By combining river interception and coastal cleanup with its offshore cleanup systems targeting legacy pollution that’s already in the ocean, the organization is charting a path to turn off the tap and mop up the mess.

About The Ocean Cleanup

The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit organization that develops and scales technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. By conducting extensive research, engineering scalable solutions, and partnering with governments, industry, and like-minded organizations, The Ocean Cleanup is working to stop plastic inflow via rivers and remove legacy plastic already polluting the oceans. As of June 2025, the non-profit has collected over 28 million kilograms (62 million pounds) of trash from aquatic ecosystems around the world. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup now employs a multi-disciplined team of approximately 200 people. The organization is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with international operations in 10 countries. For more information, visit www.theoceancleanup.com.

Having spent your money on a camera, you may be a little reluctant to spend any more on a lighting system. But believe me, it is worth the investment. Even a small, simple light is going to make a world of difference to your images.

Remember the basic rule with lights, as with everything else, is that you get what you pay for. A small plastic-cased light of low lumen count will cost far less than a large aluminium-cased light of high lumens. A more expensive light should give you more power options, allowing you to choose output strength. This is usually controlled with power button presses: one for full, a second for half power, and a third for quarter power. This gives great flexibility in your lighting when close to a subject, allowing you to balance the power of the light with the camera exposure and ambient light. Lower power output options will also extend battery life. Higher-end devices should also give a wider spread of good, even light without any hot spots. Read the manufacturer’s specifications carefully, and also have a look for advice online from people who have already bought the light you are looking at.

I have talked with many divers who feel that the more powerful the light, the better their video will be. For me, this is not the case. Over-lighting can produce horrible results, especially when you are quite close to the subject. However, powerful lights can be an advantage when lighting large areas from a distance. On the face of it, lighting looks extremely easy. Just put the light on and shoot away. If only it were that simple. Adding artificial light is crucial to getting great underwater video but, at the same time, if done badly, it can totally ruin all your efforts. I would say that no lighting at all is far better than bad lighting.

Early lights were always fitted with a tungsten filament, which was red in colour output. Now most lights use LEDs, which are blue-biased, matching daylight. Surely this new trend is an improvement? Well, yes, it is. One of the first colours to disappear (get absorbed by the water) is red, so it does make sense to put some of that red back into a scene, as with tungsten lights. But a video light will only influence colour as far as its beam travels. So if you add red light onto a fish that is near to you, it may well look good, but the background water or reef will take on a very strange and artificial colour hue. On the other hand, a daylight-balanced light, such as a modern LED one, adds all the colours of the spectrum to the scene. So the subject simply becomes brighter, where the colours are rebalanced, thus closely matching the ambient and distant water colour.

Different camera operators have their own favourite type of light for particular applications. For general filming, my favourite is one of coated metal construction for durability and small in size for manoeuvrability — approximately 15 x 5 cm (6 x 2″) tubular. It has a maximum output of 2,500–3,000 lumens, with a dimming option for half power, a wide beam angle of 120 degrees with no hot spots, and a colour temperature of 6,500K. The following image of a turtle was taken using a single hand-held video light. There is more on lighting in the ‘theory’ chapter.

Lighting

My aim when using artificial illumination is to only raise the exposure level to that of the ambient light and no further. I am not actually lighting a subject; I am simply putting back some colour, balancing the video light with the ambient. Obviously, this only applies to daytime videoing, as at night your light source dominates, dictating exposure. Be careful not to over-light. In my opinion, this is the most common mistake any camera person can make — having a video light that is too bright and/or too close to the subject.

In the second image of pouting, the video light level matches the ambient light level. Areas not touched by my light still look natural. The fish on the right are gently enhanced with added colour, but overall exposure is unaffected — they remain in balance with the background. The light has simply replaced some of the lost colour and detail.

Remember that your video light, depending on its power output, will only have effect up to a certain distance. This is usually a maximum of about 2–3 m (6–10 ft) in daylight and 5–6 m (16–20 ft) at night time. If it reaches further than that, then it is likely too powerful for you to have next to your camera and should be turned down (if that is possible), or held further away by a willing assistant.

The above photos of a sea urchin on a reef are examples of a light that is too close to the subject and then at the correct distance. The resulting ‘hot spot’ in the over-lit image effectively ruins the shot.

NEXT WEEK:

Part 3 of 6 – Buoyancy

Action Camera Underwater Video Basics by Jeff Goodman is available now from DIVEDUP Publications:
https://www.divedup.com/shop/action-camera-underwater-video-basics-the-essential-guide-to-making-underwater-films/

About Jeff Goodman

Jeff is a multiple award-winning freelance TV cameraman/filmmaker and author. Having made both terrestrial and marine films, it is the world’s oceans and their conservation that hold his passion, with over 10,000 dives in his career. Having filmed for international television companies around the world and as author of two books on underwater filming, Jeff is Author/Programme Specialist for the Underwater Action Camera course for the RAID training agency.

Jeff has experienced the rapid advances in technology for diving as well as camera equipment, and has also experienced much of our planet’s marine life. He has witnessed, first-hand, many of the changes that have occurred to the wildlife and environment during that time.

Jeff runs bespoke underwater video and editing workshops for the complete beginner up to the budding professional.