Joseph Thomas hosted a virtual presentation, introducing Balaena which has new, high efficiency oil recovery technology for use in spills in water. They have developed a small prototype vessel that rapidly recovers spilled oil from the water surface and are working on further prototypes to handle burning oil, plastics/trash, and toxic algae blooms. This presentation lasted an hour and presented some really good questions like “Where did the Balaena name come from?” Russell Covington then explained that just like the Baleen whale, our Balaena process does not care how much water it takes in and is able to allow the unused water to pass right through; all while holding on to it’s food source (which is oil in our case).