Ninety-Nine Percent of the Ocean's Plastic Is Missing 304
sciencehabit writes Millions of tons. That's how much plastic should be floating in the world's oceans, given our ubiquitous use of the stuff. But a new study (abstract) finds that 99% of this plastic is missing. One disturbing possibility: Fish are eating it. If that's the case, "there is potential for this plastic to enter the global ocean food web," says Carlos Duarte, an oceanographer at the University of Western Australia, Crawley. "And we are part of this food web."
One non-disturbing theory (Score:4, Interesting)
Naw, couldn't be. Go ahead and panic, hippies!
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that water, the ultimate solvent -- or perhaps bacteria -- are breaking down the plastics back into it's components
Of the two, I'd go with bacteria, given that the bottled water aisle of my grocery store strongly suggests that water is a little less ultimate than you imply.
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Of the two, I'd go with bacteria, given that the bottled water aisle of my grocery store strongly suggests that water is a little less ultimate than you imply.
The water in the ocean has much salt, however... Also. in the grocery store; the water is only on one side of the bottle, and there's not enough of it to make strong currents.
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The water in the ocean has much salt, however... Also. in the grocery store; the water is only on one side of the bottle, and there's not enough of it to make strong currents.
Ah... but in the ocean, there IS [postimg.org].
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Interesting)
...given that the bottled water aisle of my grocery store strongly suggests that water is a little less ultimate than you imply.
Funny you should mention that, because the reason most bottled water has an expiration date isn't that water goes bad, but because the plastics' volatile components in the bottle leach into the water (which is why everyone freaked out over BPE's awhile back).
Another theory? stuff clings to the plastic and sinks it. Having lived on the Oregon coast, I found it rather rare that something would wash up on the shore which didn't carry barnacles, seaweed, algae, and other stuff that clung to it - all of it using the bit of flotsam as a miniature base of operations from which to spend one's lifespan. Eventually so much stuff clings to it that any buoyancy the plastic once had is negated by the weight of the lifeforms and suchlike clinging to it.
Hell, even a sealed glass bottle eventually does this, as algae sticks to outside of it, which in turn attracts sand... the stuff dries like glue, BTW.
One other reason I can think of, speaking of which - did they account for all the stuff that eventually washes up on shore somewhere? I suspect they had to have, but maybe they underestimated it?
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Actually, the reason that bottled water has an expiration date is that it is mandated to.
Is there a source for that? I assumed the reason water (and everything else food/drug related) has an expiration date now was for legal liability. That way there's only a limited time you can get a company for injury for using an old product (even if it was something inert enough it wouldn't expire). They can just point to the packaging and say "Well, Your Honor. Look, the item was expired and the label says not to use it past the date. The defendant willfully ingested/used it nonetheless..."
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Everything's expiration date is also shorter than the time it takes the purple ink that shows the expiration date to fade unto unreadability. Coincidence?
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Informative)
Water is typically considered to be theuniversal solvent [about.com] rather than the 'ultimate' solvent. But the chemical reactions might take millennia. It's more likely that degradation is due to a combination of bacteria and perhaps UV light or other reactive chemical processes.
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Do you know why those water bottles have expiration dates?
It is because the plastic slowly leaks into the water, and that date is when current health regulations state that there would be too much plastic in the water for humans to safely consume it.
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How much incredibly mineral and bacteria rich salt water do we bottle exactly?
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Aside from that, m
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Aside from that, most sausage skins in the western world are made from plastic, it's been that way for decades.
Godmanit!
Don't eat the chicken skin.
Don't eat the french fried potaters.
Now the sausage skin falls out of favor, too? Cheese and rice... it's beginning to look like I can either live fifty years like a medieval king, or 80 like a monk.
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Far more logical is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]. All that hard glass, basically broken bottles ground smooth, many many far finer fragments buried into the sand below. Plastic is a whole lot software than glass so it can get ground up much faster, add in brittling from UV exposure, the shorelines of the world, lots of sun and surf and we end up with a new kind of sand. The plastic that is caught in vegetation off the shore line is far more visible.
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Funny)
Most of it is stored in a cool dark place. You know, under all that other water.
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Unfortunately, to a man, the cellar denizens burst into flames on the beach enroute to collect the water.
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If we're talking plastic water bottles, I've seen them in streams after a couple years.
They definitely start to fall apart a bit. The question is: Do they dissolve completely
into something harmless or do they like sand just become very small easily digestible
pieces and are they still dangerous once they are microscopic specs?
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Informative)
I can't speak to fresh water, but I grew up on the water in a marine environment. Nothing lasts very long, even plastic. I obviously can't say what happens to the little bits and I don't know what effect they have on the environment - but if you want to talk about the lifetime of the plastic bottles, I don't think it is very long. Even the heavily treated, thick, expensive decking material breaks down.
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:4, Funny)
Yes you can, but it cannot speak to you...
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Informative)
According to some of the stuff you can see here based on observations of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [wikipedia.org], plastic only degrades into tinier plastic pieces, right down to molecules. It's already in the food chain and has been for decades.
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Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Insightful)
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How someone made a chart comparing the amount of plastic in the ocean and the number of IE6 installs? Maybe there's some correlation there?
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Insightful)
no no no, couldnt be, we have to go with the scary version, we cant go using reasonable options, how will anyone get funding for research???
I find this to be quite bizarre; this notion that all "scary" alternatives are somehow unreasonable and only non-scary alternatives qualify as reasonable.
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This very well could be - we (you and I) basically came up with the same thought. With so little we know about the oceans of Earth, there could be a vast number of reasons the plastics we littered into the oceans have not turned up as pristine trash that lasts forever and ever. It could be fish, it could be other marine animals, it could be micro-organisms, it could also be some other unexplained process. Racing to panic about it being in the foot supply (without proof) is a little premature.
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, its almost certainly not the fish, it must be the micro-organisms.
Now, if I can only think.. what eats the micro-organisms in the oceans?
Of course its in the fucking food supply. You shit in the ocean, something eats it and we end up eating that. If we're lucky its only shit which is a naturally bio-degradable food source for plants. If we're unlucky, its the various poisons we dumped in there too, 'cos it was cheaper than processing them.
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The earth as a whole does a great job at 'processing' things.
begging the question... (Score:2)
Millions of tons. That's how much plastic should be floating in the world's oceans...
Um, no, it shouldn't be in the ocean at all... maybe there have been vast over estimates of how much was there to begin with. After all, nobody should be putting it there on purpose.
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maybe there have been vast over estimates of how much was there to begin with
Bingo. The problem probably isn't hippies underestimating the ability of the oceans to consume plastic. The problem is probably just hippies wildly overestimating the quantity of plastic escaping trash collection/recycling systems.
But this simple hypothesis won't be welcome among hippies because it fails to comport with the contaminated planet narrative, so it won't be considered or analyzed, and Obama help anyone among the researchers that dares to suggest it. Instead, theories about contamination of th
Re:begging the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to call myself a wise skeptic. Someone else provided the missing link to the original story which points out that the plastic volume is derived from a 40+ year old estimate of how much plastic washes into the ocean (0.1%.) This estimate, doubtless taken as an article of faith in the published work, is from a time prior to widespread recycling, the EPA (and its analogs in other industrialized nations) having teeth, bioplastics that are designed to degrade, improved waste management, billions spent on public awareness, sponsored programs such as Adopt-a-Highway and other environmental measures. They disregarded all of that, took the 0.1% figure from a obsolete study, multiplied it by the quantity of plastic being manufactured today ran with the figure.
This stuff is so transparent it's laughable. It deserves ridicule. Instead it's blessed with the benefit of the doubt because the worst case fits the narrative to which you've been trained to adhere.
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Man that's a good retribution.
It's more ice, up slightly from the all time low of last year.
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If water is that good at dissolving plastic we're all in a lot of trouble. As for a new, plastic-eating bacteria? That's nothing to be concerned about at all!
Seriously, fish eating it terrible. But it is probably the least bad alternative, unless we're going to include "space aliens carefully harvesting it, while leaving sea life alone" on the list of theories.
Hippie doesn't usually extend to "caring at all."
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If it's in the food chain, much of it should get concentrated near the top. How many pounds of plastic in an average shark's belly to sequester "millions of tons" of plastic?
There's also the fact that they may simply be looking in th
Re:One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that water, the ultimate solvent -- or perhaps bacteria -- are breaking down the plastics back into it's components, and the ocean (much like the oil from the BP spill) is taking care of itself.
Naw, couldn't be. Go ahead and panic, hippies!
Yeah, and everyone know that broken down oil was completely [yahoo.com] harmless [aljazeera.com].
Whatever components that plastic is breaking down into it likely contains a lot of molecules that aren't found in nature. When those molecules enter an organism there's no telling what the hell they're going to do.
I don't understand this fantasy that some people cling to that we can dump endless streams of random crap into the environment and mother nature will just magically take care of it with no consequence. People would sure as hell notice if you started dumping garbage into a lake and screwing up a beach where people swim once a week, why do you think the things that actually live in the polluted water won't be affected?
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GREAT! That means we can fill the world with 99 times more useless plastic shit! And fuck entire ecosystems while we're at it! Jolly good.
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There was an earlier story about how sand at beaches is actually a large (and growing) percentage plastic.
Re: One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not buying the universal solvent theory, because even accounting for the salts in the water, it would take hundreds of years for most plastics to dissolve.
The bacteria theory is more likely, because I remember reading something about bacteria living in trash dumps, and supposedly breaking down plastic. I do not remember a followup, but it's still more likely than the above. The problem is, this does not necessarily result in harmless components being the end result.
Here's another theory that I consider more likely: algae and barnacles attach themselves to plastic objects, and eventually sink them out of sight. Not as perfectly conductive to happily singing "La-la-la" and dismissing all worries, but hey, if you wish, you can just come up with more comforting theories, like "Magical pink narwhals are spearing the floating plastic, and melting it in underwater volcanoes to build underwater cooling systems to fight global warming".
Re: One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Interesting)
A vast amount of this plastic is breaking up into tiny pieces, which then form a new class of plankton plastic plankton [conservationmagazine.org] - and this plastic plankton is being eating by sea creatures along with the phytoplankton and zooplankton which make up their normal diet. Nobody knows what the effects of this will be.
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Plastic encrusted whale poop that will survive intact for centuries?
Re: One non-disturbing theory (Score:5, Funny)
prepackaged fish sticks?
Re: One non-disturbing theory (Score:4, Interesting)
There are only two effects.
In Modus A, the plastic breaks down in aggressive digestion, potentially poisoning the fish in the short term. This may not inflict major harm due to small amounts entering the fish's diet over time. Then again, it may kill the fish, and provide food to a larger fish or bacteria, which disperse the toxin. The toxins will be less stable by nature--if they're reactive, they're unstable--and will eventually break down to stable, harmless compounds.
In Modus B, the plastic doesn't break down at any significant speed. Monomers and extremely tiny particles get passed through the food chain, ground up smaller and smaller, but cause no real harm. The plastic could cause physical obstruction, at worst, but only at high concentration.
Modus B is actually worse, but only marginally. It's the wholly-non-toxic mode.
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NOT THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE.
Jeez, you're anonymous for a reason.
Plastic is not _only_ plastic (Score:5, Informative)
To most of you guys "plastic is plastic", that's all to it
But the truth is plastic is _more_ than mere plastic --- it is a combination of many types of chemicals, all mixed together to achieve the characteristics of the plastic that it needs to have
To see it another way, a plastic is like a steak. It is definitely _not_ only a piece of beef, but also the sauce (which itself is made of the starchy gravy - which can be broken up to other more basic components, - the flavoring [salt, sugar, spices, and so on]), plus the added chemicals, such as the aromatics (which is largely benzene group) that were formed when that beef was put over the fire
Same thing with plastics - it is not only the acrylic resins, but we also need to account for additives such as the plasticizers, color, elastomers, and so on, plus other chemicals that were produced as a by-product of the mixing of all those chemicals over a "heated process"
When we can eat steaks, the different bacteria inside our guts dissolve different ingredients from the steak that we have eaten
Bacteria are not like human beings - they do not have other bacteria in their guts !
Most often a type of bacterium may be able to digest a type of ingredient within a type of plastic, and that is all to it, which means, the other chemicals inside the plastic are still left intact, not dissolved, not digested, not broken down
Re:Plastic is not _only_ plastic (Score:5, Funny)
... a plastic is like a steak. It is definitely _not_ only a piece of beef, but also the sauce (which itself is made of the starchy gravy - which can be broken up to other more basic components, - the flavoring [salt, sugar, spices, and so on]), plus the added chemicals, such as the aromatics (which is largely benzene group) that were formed when that beef was put over the fire
What are you *doing* to that poor steak??? With that much shit tacked onto it, you might as well eat fishsticks.
Where's the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where's the article? (Score:5, Informative)
fish ate it
Re:Where's the article? (Score:5, Interesting)
plastiglomerates
http://news.sciencemag.org/earth/2014/06/rocks-made-plastic-found-hawaiian-beach
Scientists say a new type of rock cobbled together from plastic, volcanic rock, beach sand, seashells, and corals has begun forming on the shores of Hawaii.
The discovery adds to the debate about whether humanity’s heavy hand in natural processes warrants the formal declaration of a new epoch of Earth history, the Anthropocene, says paleontologist Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study. Plastics in general are so pervasive that they’ve been documented in a number of surprising places, including ingested in wildlife and on the sea floor. The mass of plastic produced since 1950 is close to 6 billion metric tons, enough to bundle the entire planet in plastic wrap. Combine plastic’s abundance with its persistence in the environment, and there’s a good chance it’ll get into the fossil record, Zalasiewicz says. “Plastics, including plastiglomerates, would be one of the key markers by which people could recognize the beginning of the Anthropocene.”
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Except these conglomerates were formed by beach humans burning wood and trash and plastic and having the latter melt into the rock. Unless the fish (or other aquatic denizens) are starting fires somewhere, it's not likely to be a general mechanism.
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Admittedly, they face a few more logistical problems than bears ever did [wikipedia.org].
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Don't be so sure.
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http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/06/ninety-nine-percent-oceans-plastic-missing
not a link but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hypothetical stuff causes hypothetical problems. Wow, I would have never thunk it! Let the paranoia.. er fun begin!
Before you claim troll show me where in the non-existent TFA (yes, I read this one [sciencemag.org]) they come up with: 1) Their estimated "millions of tons". 2) How many "millions" are they claiming. 3) Why the only possible explanation is that fish are eating it (so now it's in your food). Nope, I'm not going to wait. They use a 1970 study that showed .1% of plastic washes into the ocean. This was the same time that we had TV commercials with American Indian's crying on TV because people on average were dumping their shit everywhere. We also had everyone pumping out CFCs for everything in a can.
I agree that "The Great Pacific Garbage Dump" is a huge problem, and know that the same problems exist in every ocean. Fantastic theories (or fantasy depending on your perspective) requires evidence, and there is none to back TFA. None of this addresses the real problems causing dumping (like greed and a lack of enforced regulation, or wars).
The last paragraph of TFA says it all. "We really don’t know what this plastic is doing.” So the point of the article telling people fish are eating the plastic is what exactly?
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Why? Nobody reads them anyway.
Another disturbing theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Also the fish that eat it may now have a gut bacteria that will break it down.
Whatever the truth turns out to be I suspect it will be fascinating!
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There isn't one thing called "plastic" anyway. Some types are even intended to be "bio-degradable".
Also the fish that eat it may now have a gut bacteria that will break it down.
Plenty of animals eat all sorts of things that they cannot digest at all. Apparently beta glucose polysaccarides are ment to be good for humans to eat. Even in quanities beyond the abili
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of course it is a food source, this is why the most dire of predictions about certain catastrophic oil spills didn't happen (yes, they were very bad anyway). there are bacteria that eat petroleum, there are bacteria that can eat petroleum products. of course, this could still be a food chain problem if larger organisms consume the bacteria and are poisoned or otherwise sickened or malnourished.
also, maybe the amount of plastic in land fills vs. ocean is underestimated.
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Fish ARE eating it, this is already known + seen (Score:5, Informative)
The tiny plastic beads and broken down bits end up in fish flesh, this has been established.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3020951/these-big-eyed-fish-are-vacuuming-up-our-plastic-pollution-at-night
Plenty of information on this out there. 19% of all fish caught in a single survey in Hawaii had plastic in the bellies.
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The article doesn't say the fish flesh has plastic bits in it.
Re:Fish ARE eating it, this is already known + see (Score:5, Informative)
It getting into guts is a different problem.
Plastic microbeads are _excellent_ at absorbing many pollutants onto their surfaces.
When this is eaten in quantity, this can be a really efficient way for those pollutants to get into the fish - and hence into the food-chain.
Explains McDonalds Fish Sandwich Tasting Like Plas (Score:3, Funny)
tic.
meh (Score:4, Informative)
Whoever thinks that plastic isn't already part of the global food web hasn't eaten at a McDonalds recently
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Tell me about it. The latest happy meal toys taste great!
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Whoever thinks that plastic isn't already part of the global food web hasn't eaten at a McDonalds recently
Didn't they move from Styrofoam to paper/cardboard years ago? MMMMM.. Salty greasy cardboard....
assume it's dark (Score:2, Informative)
When you don't have an answer for the whereabouts of 90+% of the stuff your scientific theory calls for, call it dark and get some grant money to find it...
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Well . . . it looks like you solved it then. On the one hand, we have matter that is missing, in the oceans. And on the other hand, we have the cosmos, where there seems to be too much matter. So obviously Occam's Lady-Shave indicates that the plastic in the oceans is being converted into the dark matter in outer space!
Furthermore, since there is much more dark matter than the lost plastic on our planet . . . there must be other planets with intelligent life producing plastic that get's lost in their oc
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Likely Partial Answer: UV (Score:2)
The same way sailors get sun burnt very quickly. UV gets reflected by water, enlarging the exposure. UV tears apart molecular bonds, which is why, for example, the ozone layer is so important.
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Except it isn't just about floating, it's about the plastic at different depths. Not all plastic floats on the surface of the water.
Article Link Here. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the "Science" magazine page:
http://news.sciencemag.org/env... [sciencemag.org]
and here's the referenced paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea... [pnas.org]
Re:Article Link Here. (Score:4, Informative)
"What’s more, both Davison and Law say there are a number of other potential places the plastic could be ending up. It could be washing ashore, and a lot of it could be degrading into pieces too small to be detected. Another possibility is that organisms sticking to and growing on the plastic are dragging the junk beneath the ocean’s surface, either suspending it in the water column or sinking it all the way to the sea floor. Microbes may even be eating the stuff."
The only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned (Score:4, Funny)
George Carlin [youtube.com]
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Welcome to the new paradigm. The Earth plus plastic
Honestly, while I always agreed with the premise, it seems to have taken much less time than I would have thought.
Fish also eat sand (Score:2)
Fish also eat sand and lots of other things. It passes through them. You are the same way. Not everything you eat is nutritious or digested. You poop, right!?!
Or perhaps it settles to the bottom of the sea and future scientists will call it the plastacine boundary which occurred just at the time of the great extinction number nine, number nine, number nine...
Kraken are eating our dark plastic? (Score:3)
Oceanographers are at a loss to explain the lack of plastic floating in our oceans. "Where the fuck did it go?" asked Omar Roberts, head of oceanography at the Skips Institute. "We've thrown shit-tons of plastic into the ocean. Where is it?"
Omar, though, has a theory. "The Kraken ate it. We're feeding the fucking Kraken. Jeeeesus!"
Or even... (Score:2)
marine animals are ingesting it with or instead of their food. If so, is it possible some species will evolve to digest plastic and metabolize it? Will that make those creatures toxic to humans?
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A fish the evolves to get it's energy from plastic. Wow, that would be kinds cool. Plus we could duplicated it on a larger scale and get energy from plastic efficiently.
Food web? (Score:2)
Null hypothesis (Score:2, Insightful)
The original estimate was wrong.
Of course, this doesn't fit with the Enviro-Disaster meme that every new piece of information should headline with 'It's worse than we thought!'.
Captain Planet Explains (Score:2)
slashdot covered one answer last month--- (Score:2)
It's becoming plastiglomerate! See: http://www.geosociety.org/gsat... [geosociety.org]
So, in other words, plastic is biodegradeable! (Score:2)
That's good, right?
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If fish are eating it, it's in the food supply and not degraded.
You know (Score:4, Informative)
the amount of plastic in the ocean numbers have always been riddle by flaws. I don't me out of bounds from error bars, I mean flaws. Everything from the 'garbage Island, to report of large amount of underwater plastic no one can seem to find.
I wouldn't get too excited about this either way (Score:2)
First, if fish (or other marine animals) were eating the plastic (and there is a lot of evidence that they are) then they would also be starving to death (as they can't digest the plastic, and it fills up their digestive systems). When they die, the plastic would be returned to the ocean, and we would see it in our assays. So I don't think that the plastic getting eaten is the obvious solution.
Second, as anyone who has gotten sunburned while swimming knows, water doesn't block ultraviolet light very effecti
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IF this is actually what is happening, wouldnt it be smart to deposit the plastic in the oceans rather than the landfills where the bacteria or whatever is not breaking it down??? hell the ocean may be working as a giant recycling center! obviously real research is needed either way if most plastic is "missing"
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EXACTLY! Research - where is it going? Perhaps chain that along with "What ACTUALLY happens to stuff in the ocean - like dead animals, waste, petrochemicals, natural (but toxic) items introduced into the ecosystem, etc?"
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...or I started to write it when Slashdot showed no submissions on the page, but when I hit post on it - there were already a post or two (story of every Slashdot page ever)?
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I am not saying this IS what is happening - I am saying that this is a possible scenario - like the article is proposing a possible scenario (hence the very concrete words 'possibly', 'maybe' and 'perhaps' being used. Oh, forgot the word 'IF' - the biggy).
This entire article is short on facts, very big on supposition.
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You're not a veggie. You're either a vegetarian or a vegan.
Unless you meant a vegetable, in which case you should fit right in with most of the Slashdot crowd.
Re:It's sinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
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But to be fair,
Target's the only place he could find Archer Farms Lobster and Cheese Bites.