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Old 09-06-2011, 22:31   #1
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RTW Sailor Bemoans State of Oceans

Very interesting article in today's Globe and Mail about a Canadian sailor who took part in the Velux 5 Oceans race.

Really sad commentary if you compare his current observations to earlier experiences, particularly the extent of over fishing he witnessed.
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Old 10-06-2011, 04:46   #2
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Unfortunately our oceans have been used as a dump site. The thinking was the oceans were inexhaustable with fish too. It's sad, and no surprise. I remember Dawn Riley seeing plastic floating in the Southern ocean.........i2f
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Old 10-06-2011, 06:10   #3
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

One reason the Oceans have so much trash in them is because of uncaring land-lubbers who trow their trash into a creek or a river and it flows out to sea. To that land-lubber it is; Out of sight, out of mind. In other words they really don't care.
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Old 10-06-2011, 07:43   #4
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

I've boated around Houston with the bay clogged with garbage floating down the bayou's. It's terrible, at least a halfway effort to keep it from entering our waterways, but it appears like people, and even business just empty the cans over the fence.

Especially those plastic bags that were the "ECO" alternative to the tree killing paper bags.
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Old 10-06-2011, 07:50   #5
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Quote:
Originally Posted by boasun View Post
One reason the Oceans have so much trash in them is because of uncaring land-lubbers who trow their trash into a creek or a river and it flows out to sea. To that land-lubber it is; Out of sight, out of mind. In other words they really don't care.
A few pieces of paper or trash in a river wont amount to much, Barges being dumped in the ocean every few days WILL add up.
Goverment has been doing this for years, so it only stands to reason its gonna end up on other shores.
wanna stop it, STOP using those damn water bottles and buy a brita for starters, go back to paper matches instead of lighters, use your owm mug for take out coffee and learn recycling. every little bit we all do to help , can and will
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Old 10-06-2011, 09:13   #6
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

In service of fair notice I am really proud to work for a major environmental group as one of their fund raisers and this has been my pet issue when talking to people.

I write here not as a representative of this organization but as an individual who has spent his life on and around the oceans. This is breaking my heart and I don't know what I would do f I didn't have the opportunity to be on the streets every day mobilizing people to take action.

1% of the international fishing fleet is catching half the worlds fish through incredibly destructive fishing techniques. By-catch death numbers are through the roof. The latest statistic indicate that 300,000 whales, dolphins, porpoises etc. etc. are killed every year because of this sort of fishing.
It has been just about 50 years since the rise of these highly mechanized fishing techniques. Since then we have lost 90% of our big predatory fish stocks and the most optomistic science is forecasting the collapse of these fish populations within the next 40 years unless we stop these practices. It will have taken a single century for mankind to destroy something hundreds of thousands of years in the making.
I don't mind that people want to make a buck but the rapacious greed we have witnessed in recent times is frightening and raises the very real spector of ocean collapse.
Each one of us has the power to stop this.
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Old 10-06-2011, 09:41   #7
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Rubbish in the water is Asia and the Middle East. See the photo below in the marina in Bali.

14 years ago we sailed into Rio and could navigate from 100 miles out from the stream of garbage coming out.

The areas of the Western World are vastly cleaner and I haven't seen more than a small amount of flotsam and jetsam.

The article is mainly about the apparent overfishing and that really worries me.
When we arrived in the Galapagos there was a huge tuna fishing boat at anchor. It had been arrested for fishing inside the national park of the Galapagos!
The size of the tuna boat? The biggest fishing ship I have ever seen with 10 dories of the largest alaminum dingy size I have ever see... and a helicopter! They use the helicopter to find the fish and then rape the lot.

In the Eastern Med the turks pillage the sea with vast boats not seen since off Thailand and Malaysia.

The Caribbean I have never seen a big fishing boat, but here in Grenada there is a sickening newish development. Long Lines. Prior to the American Invasion the Grenadians were close to the Cubans and the Cubans showed the fishermen haw to rape this area. Now theres about 50 boats with long lines... manybe a few kilometers long with hooks every meter or so.

I get icky thinking of eating farmed fish from mud puddles in Vietnam, but surely aquaculture is the way to go. If we can't grow it we shouldn't be eating it.

Just in the supermarket and saw the brand of tuna in cans: "Chicken of the Sea". Its NOT chicken. Chickens are farmed and little environmental damage is done.

And the worst fishing practice of all, and is done by all boats: discarding the 'bycatch". If a tuna boat(etc) catches some other valuable fish they just throw it over the side - dead!


Make no bones about it, fishing boats are raping the oceans.
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Old 10-06-2011, 09:51   #8
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Having circumnavigated the globe, Mark has seen it first hand.
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Old 10-06-2011, 10:07   #9
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkJ View Post
Rubbish in the water is Asia and the Middle East. See the photo below in the marina in Bali.

14 years ago we sailed into Rio and could navigate from 100 miles out from the stream of garbage coming out.

The areas of the Western World are vastly cleaner and I haven't seen more than a small amount of flotsam and jetsam.

The article is mainly about the apparent overfishing and that really worries me.
When we arrived in the Galapagos there was a huge tuna fishing boat at anchor. It had been arrested for fishing inside the national park of the Galapagos!
The size of the tuna boat? The biggest fishing ship I have ever seen with 10 dories of the largest alaminum dingy size I have ever see... and a helicopter! They use the helicopter to find the fish and then rape the lot.

In the Eastern Med the turks pillage the sea with vast boats not seen since off Thailand and Malaysia.

The Caribbean I have never seen a big fishing boat, but here in Grenada there is a sickening newish development. Long Lines. Prior to the American Invasion the Grenadians were close to the Cubans and the Cubans showed the fishermen haw to rape this area. Now theres about 50 boats with long lines... manybe a few kilometers long with hooks every meter or so.

I get icky thinking of eating farmed fish from mud puddles in Vietnam, but surely aquaculture is the way to go. If we can't grow it we shouldn't be eating it.

Just in the supermarket and saw the brand of tuna in cans: "Chicken of the Sea". Its NOT chicken. Chickens are farmed and little environmental damage is done.

And the worst fishing practice of all, and is done by all boats: discarding the 'bycatch". If a tuna boat(etc) catches some other valuable fish they just throw it over the side - dead!


Make no bones about it, fishing boats are raping the oceans.

This photo upsets my stomach.
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Old 10-06-2011, 10:35   #10
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Quote:
Originally Posted by boasun View Post
One reason the Oceans have so much trash in them is because of uncaring land-lubbers who trow their trash into a creek or a river and it flows out to sea. To that land-lubber it is; Out of sight, out of mind. In other words they really don't care.
It's amazing, isn't it? There was a big hubbub here on Nantucket on one recent big event weekend (Daffodil Festival). It seems the DPW forgot to put trash cans out at 'Sconset (Siasconset) Beach. What's the big deal, I thought - if there's no trash cans, people will just carry their trash away with them and deposit it in the next can they see, right? WRONG! They left garbage strewn all over the beach!
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Old 11-06-2011, 09:23   #11
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

The solution is not one to which most humans will subscribe, but it centers on the fact that there are too many of us, and even if everyone on the planet was a religious greenie who composted and didn't litter and ate nothing but plankton cakes...we still would have too much "byproducts" entering the oceans and our manufactured crap would still fail to degrade without killing sea life.

This was known when I was a kid:



Next month, I turn 50. The population of the world has gone from 3.8 to around 7 billion in the last 40 years. All of them, without exception, need food and water, every day. If we don't restrain ourselves, one way or another, we will be restrained, as the point of view that see us as separate or "above" our environment somehow is a dangerous delusion.

I would prefer, personally, that when the human cull is imposed, that we don't wipe out several other species in the process, guilty only of being made of protein.
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Old 11-06-2011, 10:00   #12
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Quote:
Originally Posted by boasun View Post
One reason the Oceans have so much trash in them is because of uncaring land-lubbers who trow their trash into a creek or a river and it flows out to sea. To that land-lubber it is; Out of sight, out of mind. In other words they really don't care.
Well, it doesn't need to be dumped into a creek or river at all. Just drop it where you stand and it will make it to the ocean eventually. Just check the water in any marina after a storm. All that trash was on the street the day before the storm. Hang out at your local Walmart and watch people clean out there cars in the parking lot, or open the packed goods they just bought and leave the trash behind.

As far as Bali or any other 3rd world spot goes, there is something we take for granted that simply does not exist there. Landfills. I have spent much time there. I have seen it... or better stated, I have NOT seen it. There are no landfills to see. If they exist, they are few and far between.

Not having landfills, there's no need for trash collection. One good thing is that they don't generate as much trash as we do. Much of the population gets by without all the packaging that is the problem. But there's still way too much. The idea of collecting trash and processing it is way to alien to them. And the idea of generating trash come from us.

Conservation is for developed countries.

I once watch as a ship pumped out it's bilge of opaque water into the crystal clear waters where it was tied up while unloading its coal.
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Old 11-06-2011, 10:55   #13
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkJ View Post
Rubbish in the water is Asia and the Middle East. See the photo below in the marina in Bali.

14 years ago we sailed into Rio and could navigate from 100 miles out from the stream of garbage coming out.

The areas of the Western World are vastly cleaner and I haven't seen more than a small amount of flotsam and jetsam.

The article is mainly about the apparent overfishing and that really worries me.
When we arrived in the Galapagos there was a huge tuna fishing boat at anchor. It had been arrested for fishing inside the national park of the Galapagos!
The size of the tuna boat? The biggest fishing ship I have ever seen with 10 dories of the largest alaminum dingy size I have ever see... and a helicopter! They use the helicopter to find the fish and then rape the lot.

In the Eastern Med the turks pillage the sea with vast boats not seen since off Thailand and Malaysia.

The Caribbean I have never seen a big fishing boat, but here in Grenada there is a sickening newish development. Long Lines. Prior to the American Invasion the Grenadians were close to the Cubans and the Cubans showed the fishermen haw to rape this area. Now theres about 50 boats with long lines... manybe a few kilometers long with hooks every meter or so.

I get icky thinking of eating farmed fish from mud puddles in Vietnam, but surely aquaculture is the way to go. If we can't grow it we shouldn't be eating it.

Just in the supermarket and saw the brand of tuna in cans: "Chicken of the Sea". Its NOT chicken. Chickens are farmed and little environmental damage is done.

And the worst fishing practice of all, and is done by all boats: discarding the 'bycatch". If a tuna boat(etc) catches some other valuable fish they just throw it over the side - dead!


Make no bones about it, fishing boats are raping the oceans.
I have been a commercial fisherman for 10 years and some of the things that go on would scare you. I won't get into any specifics but i have seen allot of dead whales discarded turtles and any thing else you can think of.
It is very unfortunate but one has to make a living. There needs to be better practices and more monitoring on the fisheries.
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Old 11-06-2011, 11:06   #14
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

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Originally Posted by capn_billl View Post
I've boated around Houston with the bay clogged with garbage floating down the bayou's. It's terrible, at least a halfway effort to keep it from entering our waterways, but it appears like people, and even business just empty the cans over the fence.

Especially those plastic bags that were the "ECO" alternative to the tree killing paper bags.
You mean those terrible paper bags that used to provide jobs for American loggers, from renewable forests?
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Old 11-06-2011, 11:23   #15
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Re: RTW Sailor bemoans state of oceans

I guess if you can't wave a bikini to get publicity / sponsorship then waving a green shroud is the next best thing

Always amusing that there is never enough to go around for "you" - but enough to indulge a rich man's hobby.
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