What happens when you hit one of these?

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by dcapn88

How about requiring the vendor(s) to post locations of these things at a single site on the web (with lat/lon...searchable). Then those who are sailing in/into those areas could plot them as way-points (danger areas) on their GPS.

The "Ocean Cleanup" system is a drifter, not anchored (it's about 3-1/2 miles deep in that area). It would be interesting to see a real-time location for it, but it's not going to stay in one place for very long.

Originally Posted by dcapn88

PS: I once bounced off an unlit concrete post in the middle of San Diego Harbor, (requiring replacing my port rub-rail and some fiberglass repair). When I inquired about this to the local CG they said there was no requirement for lighting this post because it was a "private aid to navigation". I was flabbergasted, appalled and p-eed off! Just when I thought I already heard all the stupidity possible in navigation rules!! Of course I wrote my congressman about it, but.....

Was it marked on the charts? Here is a small section of the San Francisco Bay, with five unlighted private buoys shown. There are many others elsewhere in the bay and shown on the chart.

[Aaarrgh]

Reality hurts, but here goes...

Originally Posted by rdheaney

And I wonder just how much of that waste is the direct result of all the plastic crap they manufacture for us, sold here in Big Box stores.

YEAH! Like all of that CRAP that's in these damned electronic devices that we're typing on right now, and the CRAP that's in our navigational instruments, our holding tanks, our head seats, etc. !!!

Now, I'm really PISSED OFF at myself!

I'm gonna do something about it, and sell my boat to some other fake "environmentalist" who will claim to give a $#!7 !

Seriously though, I do like the idea of shutting off the faucet before mopping up.

Aaarrgh!

[Wendi]

I have been told that the boys who paddle up to your boat to collect your garbage for $5, are then disposing of it in the mangroves. They are not going to figure out how to find a proper place to dispose of your garbage. I was told to never give the garbage bags to those boys.
We have been shipping our plastic to China, where they were processing it and recycling only a tiny portion. They recently stopped accepting our plastic.
I think that the fastest and most efficient way to reduce plastics in Costco and Sams. If they just stopped using little plastic cups and spoons for the food samples, it would have a MUCH bigger impact than outlawing straws. I notice that their forks and spoons got much tinier.

[arcticmonkey]

surely with the most brilliant minds out there some one has come up with a formula ... " if you made it... then unmake it

[svmariane]

My two shilling's worth...

There's a problem and some people are trying to do something about it. Yes, its a two-part problem of cleanup and prevention and this effort is only an attempt at the former.

Anyone else old enough to remember Apollo One? On January 27, 1967, three U.S. astronauts died when a fire broke out in the capsule cabin. Didn't stop the program, though, and Apollo 11 put two people on the moon, July 20, 1969.

My point? This cleanup project might work (or partially work). It might fail (and fail spectacularly). But people will learn from the attempt and maybe use that knowledge as a stepping-stone towards different and better efforts.

And if it ends up being just so much additional trash in the ocean? Well consider this: there's now so much leftover junk circling the earth from various manned and unmanned space efforts that it's starting to interfere with new space launch efforts and even imperil orbiting communication satellites. Not to mention future manned missions. So maybe knowledge gained from this ocean cleanup attempt might one day become applicable to orbital space cleanup. You never know, right?

I applaud and appreciate the courage, wisdom or even eccentricity of those who think outside the box. And more power to them if they make a buck along the way.

But that's just me.
James

[MainMan]

Originally Posted by Adelie

Coal use in western countries has been in decline for a decade or more. New coal fired plants are not being built in the US. China accounts for more than half the global coal use, with India about 2/3s of global use.

About 60% of ocean plastic waste comes from 5 Asian countries.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-...world-combined

While there is plenty of blame to be placed on the west, it’s a more complex and much more difficult problem.

I understand that it was the western countries that created the first fossil fuel generators + the first creators of plastics - I doubt they understood how much positive benefits they were providing or if they ever considered the disposal issues.

China is the largest coal consumer, accounting for 49% of the world's total coal. The next largest, the United States, consumed 11% of the world's total. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Top 10 Coal Producers (in Mt) in 2011 were: China 3,576 (46%), United States 1,004 (13%), India 586 (8%), Australia 414 (5%), Indonesia 376 (5%)
When you compare the populations to consumption - Those of us in Australia ought to be disgusted with ourselves!!
Theres those glass houses!

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by Paul Elliott

This "Ocean Cleanup" device will be somewhere in the NEP gyre. It looked like this when we sailed / motored through it (we've been through this area many times):

So Paul, are you saying the trash patch doesn't exist or you just weren't able to find it on your travels?

I remember others trying to find it on Google earth to no avail. Also, searching for it now brings up lots of pictures that show beaches full of debris, not the middle of the ocean. Even the national geographic article shows rubbish on the beach:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...garbage-patch/


Wikipedia states:
Despite the common public image of islands of floating rubbish, its low density (4 particles per cubic meter) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_..._garbage_patch

The plastic doesn't go away, but it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces (partly because of the sunlight) which could significantly reduce the effectiveness of this ocean cleanup device.
We should continue to look into ways of removing all that garbage while at the same time reduce the influx of new trash as much as possible. Large nets at the mouths of those 4 rivers that carry the most rubbish would be an obvious first step but even that is close to impossible unless boats can still pass through unhindered at any time.

[MainMan]

Now in my 50's (yes looking good for my years NOT) I've realised that I am part of the problem. I now aim to reduce the crap I consume, store, dispose. It's shocking to learn from friends that they fill their garage and rent storage to keep more stuff that they rarely use. Its a mindset.
I made quite a handsome amount of income through selling off the gear that I used to hold onto - just in case) and I am now able to sell the spare carport, garden sheds and now subdividing the land.
What I love about my marina friends is how easily they gift, share and donate the items they hardly use. And how grateful they are to be given something.
It's a mindset !

[Aaarrgh]

Originally Posted by svmariane

My two shilling's worth...

There's a problem and some people are trying to do something about it. Yes, its a two-part problem of cleanup and prevention and this effort is only an attempt at the former.
(Mopping before shutting the faucet)(Individual taxpayers, and our government representatives, should be able to protest and discontinue funding inefficient "efforts")

I applaud and appreciate the courage, wisdom or even eccentricity of those who think outside the box. And more power to them if they make a buck along the way.
(And, thinking "outside the box" (way outside) I'm thinking that a thermonuclear warhead, deployed slightly above this inconsiderate, illegal glob of plastic, would likely rid our waters of this menace, and launch it into space in such a powder that it would not be a danger to satellites. And just think of the seafood we could harvest.)

But that's just me.
James

But that's just me... and surely everyone wants to be me.

Aaarrgh!

[Aaarrgh]

HEY!
I was just listening to a report on the radio that there will be a HUGE contingent of plastic-hating, drinking straw, plastic cutlery, and Frizbee protesters marching on Washington D.C.

Then right after that, I heard the report that an opposing group of marchers will meet the anti-Tupperware mob head on, to "Save The Trees!" that will be harvested to make the resurrected idea of paper-only straws (they must also want to ban milkshakes), plates (which the anti-plastic group thinks can be used as Frizbees), paper forks (good luck with that), etc.

I'll tune in to the nightly news to see this brawl. This ought to be good entertainment.

I think the plastic knives will cause the most bodily harm, but can surely be treated with paper BandAids. The tree-huggers will at least have REAL BandAids to treat all of those paper cuts. We'll see!

Aaarrgh!

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by hzcruiser

So Paul, are you saying the trash patch doesn't exist or you just weren't able to find it on your travels?

Of course it exists, just not in the "plastic island twice as large as Texas" form that so many people believe. And those photos of people kayaking through some trash-filled bay (when the accompanying article is about the gyre) don't do much to improve the accuracy of our perceptions.

In my travels, I've seen plenty of trash, but what you can see on the surface is generally individual pieces of trash: bits of plastic, bottles, clumps of polypropylene line, and occasional bigger pieces: logs, floating docks, mooring buoys, overturned boats (after the big Japanese tsunami). And there's usually a *lot* of space between the bits of debris. You can go for hours between sightings. I've not towed a net, but looking into the first few feet depth of the gyre, I've seen way more sealife than visible bits of plastic.

Here's a chart of some of my transits of the NE Pacific basin. I've made a few more since I plotted these:


And this is typically what I see in the gyre region:


This "Ocean Cleanup" project appears to have been designed to collect the larger bits of debris in the top few feet of the water column. I don't think the nets are fine enough to catch the microplastics. I suspect that the Ocean Cleanup design was conceived with conditions like this in mind:

I also suspect that once the project got rolling, had received adoring publicity, and obtained millions of $$$ in donations, even if the founders discovered the truth about the conditions they were actually going to encounter they were in too deep to stop and re-think their approach.

But that's merely my suspicion, knowing how the steamroller-effect works in real life. I could be wrong.

[Baba Buoy]

I've talked to several Tranpac sailors who claimed that the plastic spiral in the middle of the Pacific is grossly exaggerated. However, clumps of fishing gear commonly catch those dagger keels, and they often lose half a day trying to clear the nets and ropes.

Separate note, I took a Cruise along Chili's Patagonia coast and was outraged seeing, what I thought, was large pieces of canvas cloth floating by the ship every couple minutes. Later I found out they were giant jellyfish.

[svmariane]

Originally Posted by Aaarrgh

But that's just me... and surely everyone wants to be me.

Aaarrgh!

Mopping before turning off the faucet? Well, putting that another way, I would turn on the bilge pumps before trying to fix the leak in the hull.

edit: Then again, when there are two or more people aboard there's good value in doing both efforts simultaneously. So why NOT have ocean cleanup efforts and prevention efforts as a two-pronged approach? I already admitted/agreed that the project under discussion might very well turn out expensive and ineffective - and I'm sure folks said the same when Apollo 1 turned disastrous.

Humans are engineers and invent stuff and modify our environment to suit, true? And aren't some engineers are better than others? I bet the first sailboat didn't have mechanical geared-ratio winches but somebody had an idea and here we are.

I'm no expert on the subject but this article is an interesting first read. FIRST read - not definitive or completely accurate and somewhat alarmist, but nonetheless of interest. https://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-a7860726.html
nnnn

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by Baba Buoy

Separate note, I took a Cruise along Chili's Patagonia coast and was outraged seeing, what I thought, was large pieces of canvas cloth floating by the ship every couple minutes. Later I found out they were giant jellyfish.

On one of my returns to the mainland, a crewmember was aghast at all the bits of plastic floating around us. I mean it was *everywhere*, one piece every few square meters or so, out to the horizon in some cases.

This is what he was seeing:


They were "Velella Velella", AKA "By the Wind Sailors", not quite a jellyfish, but similar. We caught one in a bucket to show him.

[curtis742]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

The idea of ignoring the source is a guarantee of failure. Consider the pure math of the subject. How many tons per day are being spewed into the worlds oceans? I can predict that the daily capacity of removal of this thing is probably two or more magnitudes less. In fact, if it was parked in front of the Yangtze it would not collect 100% of the trash unless the entire river was diverted through it. That makes it a worthless waste and in fact, a future hunk of trash to deal with. We do this useless thing instead because it is easier than addressing the real and known problem. I believe all of these countries are signatories of CITES?

The same tactics worked beautifully with regards to Fukushima and is still being employed today.