The Ocean is broken...

[fryewe]

[QUOTE=Boatguy30;1369606
I'm just about to go attend a fundraiser for a friend dying of cancer. She eats lots of local fish also.[/QUOTE]

Not to be insensitive but to correlate eating fish with her having cancer seems a stretch. There are a thousand other activities you could make a similar statement with:

Does she sneeze/breathe/eat chocolate/garden/drive/laugh/read/shop? Then why not attribute her condition to one of these?

Has she consulted with specialists who have unequivocably determined eating fish caused her condition?

[Boatguy30]

Mate, were talking plastic in the ocean. It poisons the food stream. I was not specially saying her cancer was caused by it, but I'm sure you're the type to see all research as some liberal scam trying to stick a hand in your wallet.

[DeepFrz]

So twenty tons washes up on the beach every year -- 40000 pounds if short tons and 44000 pounds if long tons.

And at least 100 pounds washes up every week (52 weeks per year) or 5200 pounds per year.

So which is it...

A big disparity in estimates. What else is wrong with the data?

Possible misquote. 100 lbs a day is close to 20 tons a yr. But remember these are all guestimates, there is no one down there with a balance scale. But the problem is huge. Just take it for what it is man.

[fryewe]

There is a real problem with increasing waste and places to put it.

Human nature being what it is I don't think this problem will easily be solved. Not because of corporate insensitivity but individual knuckleheads.

I remember the first roadside sign I saw prohibiting littering and showing the penalty for it. I was perhaps ten years old (a long time ago in a land far away). Since that time I have traveled to forty eight states and two territories and thirty some-odd other countries. In every one I have visited litter on land in the gutters and streets has been widespread. I have sailed northern hemisphere oceans and seas and the South Pacific since the 60s and floating debris in the ocean has been ubiquitous. There was a lot out there from my first experiences but I suspect there is more now simply because the population is greater. My experience is the wealthier the country or the locale the cleaner it is.

There's a slow flowing river south of Mobile AL that takes much of the rainwater drainage from the metropolitan area. After heavy rains the river fills with floating trash - mostly plastic and paper - from bank to bank for much of its length. The river dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. Trash traps are being built to allow collection of the garbage for easy removal.

Yet - despite all this trash and the Deep Horizon spill in the Gulf - fishing in the Gulf near the mouth of Mobile Bay this year has been FANTASTIC with exceptional catches of Wahoo/Red Snapper/Yellowfin/Specks/Grouper/Red Fish/and shrimp and crab and on and on...

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by DeepFrz

Possible misquote. 100 lbs a day is close to 20 tons a yr. But remember these are all guestimates, there is no one down there with a balance scale. But the problem is huge. Just take it for what it is man.

My mind doesn't work that way. If data is to be used to make a case for dramatic correction action for something that is a (obvious) problem...then the presenter should get it right.

I don't dispute that the problem is there...nor that it's perhaps acute...but reality trumps the made-up figures every time if appropriate action is to be taken. I don't know what paper the quote with the bad data was from but it had bibliographical numbers in the text such as a peer reviewed paper or study may have. Such a paper shouldn't rely on you or I to figure out where the error is. And it doesn't appear to be a misquote by a journalist reviewing the paper but part of the paper itself.

[SV Maclas]

Such a bummer!

[DeepFrz]

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/...-plastic/?_r=1

From an article in the NY International Times. Some interesting links in that article.

“When I see this I don’t feel inspired, I feel panic,” she told him. “How do we get to hope from here?”

“That question,” Mr. Jordan told me, “still rings in me like a temple bell.”

[DeepFrz]

And at least 100 pounds washes up every week

Actual quote:

Here on Midway Atoll, marine debris is a problem that is visible on
otherwise pristine white beaches; nets and other kinds of discarded
materials wash up on shore in quantities of over 100 pounds per week.

http://www.fws.gov/midway/Midway_Ato...e_Lighters.pdf

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by fryewe

...Yet - despite all this trash and the Deep Horizon spill in the Gulf - fishing in the Gulf near the mouth of Mobile Bay this year has been FANTASTIC with exceptional catches of Wahoo/Red Snapper/Yellowfin/Specks/Grouper/Red Fish/and shrimp and crab and on and on...

Elsewhere in the Gulf, you get great honkin' dead zones.

Due to warming, the lobster catch in the NE seaboard is at record highs, which has greatly depressed the price for lobster. It's OK if you like cheap lobster, I guess. Not so hot for other fisheries.

Quibbling about a data glitch in a forum post is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If you're online you have equal access to the source, there's no need to rag on the commenter. The point is the same - plastic all over the Pacific.

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by DeepFrz

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/...-plastic/?_r=1

From an article in the NY International Times. Some interesting links in that article.

Thanks for the link DF.

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Quibbling about a data glitch in a forum post...

Pointing out an error isn't usually considered quibbling.

You obviously read my other posts in which I clearly stated I agreed and gave my experience on the subject. Going out of your way to call my point quibbling make you feel better? Go-o-o-d.

[pbiJim]

Originally Posted by Andy73

When they arrived, they were quite disappointed as they were seeing very little trash... just a few floating things (this was before Fukushima). However, when they started running their sampling kits, they were finding alot of small particles of plastics in the water. Both from degrading objects as well as spills from plastic beads shipped to manufacturing plants.

A number of years ago, probably around the early 1990's, a research vessel, I think it was the SSV Corwith Cramer, did a bit of snooping in the sargasso sea, looking for plastic pollution. Their reported findings showed that the vast majority of the plastic in that part of the ocean was in the form of raw beads & not processed materials or post consumer goods. I had a relative on the ship & I believe the findings to have been accurately reported.

[pbiJim]

Closing lines of the article -

""I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.
"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there.""


That's either a LOT of fuel, or not much garbage, or an inaccurate statement. This line hurts the overall credibility of the article in my opinion.


That aside, from his descriptions, the improper fishing practices that he described sounded more immediately alarming to me than the garbage. I have personally noticed that fish are not plentiful as they were in the past. It's gotten hard not to notice. I never thought that I would live to see the day that there was a bag limit on bluefish, but today we have it.

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Elsewhere in the Gulf, you get great honkin' dead zones.

Thanks for the link to the forecast for the GoM dead zone this year. Fortunately it turned out to be only about 60 percent as big as expected.

While the annual fertilizer runoffs create the dead zones each year I haven't been able to find out what happens in these areas when the depletion zones aren't there...and what the net effect after dilution of the fertilizer might be.

Farm ponds often need fertilization to develop and maintain a healthy pond ecology. It's not far fetched that the ocean would respond similarly to some level of fertilization (after all the greatest concentration of life is at the land-water interface where organic decay provides the food for new life).

Organic fertilizers would likely be less harmful than the chemical fertilizers often used on farms and lawns.

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by pbiJim

Closing lines of the article -

That's either a LOT of fuel, or not much garbage, or an inaccurate statement. This line hurts the overall credibility of the article in my opinion.

The answer is "not much garbage" (per volume of ocean). I've sailed and motored through the Garbage Patch region many times and the trash there is dispersed to the point where you may not see anything visible for miles. Even in the occasional areas of higher concentration you might see ten or twenty chunks per hour. You do see plentiful marine life though, including millions of jellyfish. Any scooping or straining operation would have to trap and kill huge amounts of sealife in order to reclaim a few pounds of debris (including the sub-surface plastic "nurdules").

The last time I transited this region was summer of 2012, and my crew included two NOAA researchers who were performing a debris survey.

I believe that there is no way to realistically clean up the debris once it's in the Gyre. Even if you could manage to screen out the junk without an unacceptable marine life by-catch, the fuel needed and resources expended to do this would be excessive. I've seen plans to "harvest" the plastic debris and convert it to fuel on the vessel, in an effort to make the collection process self-sufficient. This is a ridiculously flawed idea, again due to the low trash density and the marine-life by-catch.

Stop the trash at the source, either by recycling, or not creating it in the first place.