The Intersection of Creativity and Science

Mapping 'Bad Boats' in Brittany and how grassroots community engagement is crucial to finding solutions with mass scale marine pollution

Camera, check.

Tripod, check.

Handheld Bluetooth microscope, check.

Empty glass jars for sediment samples, check.

Smart phone charged, check.

Kids snacks and water for all, check.

My kit looks a little different these days, so do the locations I’m scouting. I zoom in on Google maps and find the boat cemetery I’d stumbled upon weeks earlier when mum and dad were visiting. For the research I’m doing, a boat cemetery is both a bit of a jackpot and equally terrifying. An actual designated tourist site—validated by the Government and local tourism boards (info sign boards and all!)—and we were visiting now in the peak of summer.

Parents and kids walked through the wrecks, kids swinging on discarded ropes hanging off derelict boats or climbing on their skeletons. The info sign does say not to touch the wrecks, but clearly not many obey the rules.

We get to work quickly, first taking photos and videos of the boats, discarded along the low tide shoreline, empty oyster and mussel shells beneath our feet on the mudflats. Next we take out the microscope, sync it with my phone, and record closeups of visible damage.

We are documenting ‘Bad Boats’ as part of a citizen science initaitive I’m leading with the non-profit association I co-founded with my husband, The Floating Stories Lab.
Regenerative Tides: Sailing for Solutions (ReTISS), aims to merge science and creative practice whilst to explore the impacts of marine pollution from end-of-life boats. Though focussed particularly on fiberglass (GRP), being based in Brittany it’s hard to ignore the vast volume of wooden wrecks, many of which have fiberglass components or are simply shedding paints (plastics) and other toxic substances.

At this designated boat cemetery, the mere act of enabling a handful of larger, commercial wrecks and their stories to rot away on the beach has attracted recreational boat owners to dump their modern, fiberglass and composite boats once unable to function further. Thus, this cultural and historic site is actually a dumpyard—an eyesore in an otherwise tranquil waterway teaming with biodiversity, with residential housing and an oyster farm fringing the shoreline.

Under the microscope, the kids and I get a good look at how even the smallest section of damage is shedding materials into the ecosystem. We see splintered glass fibers, cracked and shedding paints. Scientists attest that GRP’s chemistry is such that it behaves asbestos-like; could you imagine the outrage if asbestos materials were allowed to be dumped along our shores?

We take sediment samples and walk over to the other side of the bay under the hot summer sun. Passing a small, moored recreational GRP boat clearly still in use, I notice cracks in the hull and we decide to take a look under the microscope. Splinters of fiberglass stick out from the small cracked zone and I’m reminded of the shards scientists at University of Brighton found piercing sea snails and other organisms in Chichester Harbour, where it was first discovered that fiberglass pollution from end-of-life boats was being ingested by organisms including oysters and mussels, potentially entering our food chains. It was this scientific discovery that led to our decision to build a Wharram wooden catamaran (not environmentally benign, but far more sustainable than mass produced plsatic boats given they are typically built with plywood, hardwood timber, epoxy and only small amounts of external fiberglass sheathing) and me to explore the intersection of creativity and science, eventuating in ReTISS and winning a small, EU grant to pilot our citizen science initiative.

The kids are hot and hungry. We take one more jar of sediment, pack our kit away in the car, and search for the closest creperie. On the hour-and-a-half drive home, I contemplate the potential mass contamination issue we are dealing with with these abandoned, derelict and end-of-life boats. An overlooked microplastics theme very few scientists seem to know about, yet fiberglass is all around us, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of legacy GRP boats now reaching their end-of-life in a society that still hasn’t figured out how to dispose of them responsibly.

GRP products pop up at me everywhere; the shelters over the benches on the sidelines of the boys’ football fields, the waterslide in the baby section of the public swimming pool, the giant blades of wind turbines, and of course, my very own surfboard. During the post-war period, the production of GRP skyrocketed. My grandfather and his brothers had a boat building company, beginning with timber but quickly expanding into composites, building GRP surfboards, kayaks, speed boats and even swimming pools. They all died of varying forms of lung disease and cancer, my grandfather particularly young when he passed.

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In October, we are hosting the Floating Stories Lab’s first ever citizen science creative residency. We received an overwhelming number of applications from very differeing creatives around the world (mostly female) eager to join us for the week-long residency exploring human-ocean kinship at the intersection of creativity and science in the local context of end-of-life boats.

The local college has embedded the project into their English and Biology curriculum from September through to January. Kids will be conducting fieldwork, sampling organisms to assess for fiberglass ingestion, and creating a short video.
Dr. Corina and I have drafted a field guide in that is now being illustrated, and we will release this along with a public survey form for community groups and schools.

What began as a question a year ago of how can I use my creative background to raise awareness amongst the public, scientists and policy makers around this issue, has snowballed into a grassroots movement gaining momentum worldwide. We certainly hope to scale the data mapping beyond Brittany; this is a global problem though needs to also be considered in local context. Citizens, thus, play such an important role.

Since beginning this work, I’ve become increasingly interested in the biota found in each location I visit for my fieldwork. Being out in the field, camera in hand, I pay closer attention. I think about what I can’t see with my naked eye, too, and play around with the microscope to discover more.

A boat well made can last several decades, but eventually, death comes knocking. Strong weather events can fasttrack the death of a boat, as too can poor maintenance. As we build our vessel, we are already thinking about its end-of-life and drafting a ‘death plan’.

Locally, I have seen small, wooden hulls repaired and brightly painted turned into flower gardens on public road round-a-bouts, attracting pollinators. Properly maintained, and if ecologically-gentle paints are used, this feels like a better second life for boats no longer seaworthy, along with children’s playgrounds, public shelters, studios and accommodation.

The solutions, I believe, need to come from community collaboration across diverse fields and through collective knowledge exchange. The marine industry alone will not solve this issue, though the big players need to step up, innovate, collaborate, cut out their greenwashing, and become more transparent. Almost every small-to-mid scale boat builder I’ve spoken to about the issue has told me directly they have long wanted change in the industry. Some, whilst quietly suffering the health impacts of a lifelong service to boat building, are experimenting themseleves with less toxic materials, though technical performance and price are common barriers. We are experiencing this ourselves with our own boat build, so I’m very empathetic to folks wanting to craft less impactful boats but struggling to find the right balance of ecological and financial sustainability.

We chose to build a Wharram as they are by-design more sustainable than mass produced fiberglass mould boats. There’s also something about hand building that enables the development of a deep relationship with your boat that drives you to care for it as a companion rather than a tool. My good friend Kiana talks about her close companionship with Mara Noka, her 50-year-old gay male boat, as does another close friend and advisor, Hanneke, who has described the build of her 63ft Polynesian double canoe Spirit of Gaia as like an offspring between her and her late partner, James. Perhaps this is something to be said of building wooden boats, when the builder has been active in materials selection from the start and is thus more aware of the boat coming from a living source? At least, that’s my experience so far.

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In two weeks, I’m heading over to Port Townsend for the famous Wooden Boat Festival, the largest of its kind in North America. I’ll be giving a presentation about the creation of the Floating Stories Lab; a collection of stories that led us to this point and a look at what we envision in the future, when the boat is launched and supporting research, storytelling and community engagement on a circumnavigation.

I’m also joining Kiana and Hanneke on a Wharram Women Panel ‘Past, Present, Future;’ to even be considered amongst the legacy of ‘Wharram Woman’ is an honor and I hold this close to my heart as I draw the lines of our boat and acknowledge the knowledge transfer from the Polynesian seafarers who inspired James Wharram’s designs, through to the women who drew the plans, Hanneke who now heads the family business and advises boat builders around the world, and all those coming together to help us build.

You will also find Kiana, Hanneke and I at the Women & the Wind Foundation booth, screening the Women & the Wind Documentary on the Saturday night, and participating in a Q&A session after the movie. The festival lineup is phenomenal and I am excited for the cross pollination of ideas and inspiration from other wooden boat builders and lovers.

At the heart of all of this is a love for the ocean, and the ultimate awareness that a thriving ocean is essential for humans to thrive on our Planet. We are thus getting our youth involved in all aspects of the Floating Stories Lab; the boat build, fieldwork, storytelling and ocean activities. My boys began free-diving with Brittany-based waterwoman Lea Brassy, and we are now partnering with Lea to sponsor more youth underwater excursions through our FSL membership program: 50€ from the 150€ annual Explorer Pass membership will sponsor a youth’s participation in Lea’s classes.

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Thanks for being here, and apologies for grammatical and spelling mistakes. I write in the early hours of the morning when the kids are still asleep, and they’ve now woken up so the time for editing is gone. Secretly, though, I have grown fond of unedited work in an age of AI—visibile mistakes in others’ Substacks confirm the post has ineed been written by a human. What a strange time we live in.

If you’d like to learn more about mapping ‘Bad Boats’ or get involved, don’t hestitate to reach out directly, or simply visit the ReTISS web page HERE for more info and fill out the ‘Get Involved’ form. If you missed out on the creative residency, be sure to join our mailing list as we will definetely be hosting more in the future.

Best,

Angie