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Earth Science

The Missing 99%: Why Can't We Find the Vast Majority of Ocean Plastic? (theguardian.com) 97

Posted by msmash from the troubling-questions dept.
What scientists can see and measure, in the garbage patches and on beaches, accounts for only a tiny fraction of the total plastic entering the water. From a report: Every year, 8m tons of plastic enters the ocean. Images of common household waste swirling in vast garbage patches in the open sea, or tangled up with whales and seabirds, have turned plastic pollution into one of the most popular environmental issues in the world. But for at least a decade, the biggest question among scientists who study marine plastic hasn't been why plastic in the ocean is so abundant, but why it isn't. What scientists can see and measure, in the garbage patches and on beaches, accounts for only a tiny fraction of the total plastic entering the water. So where is the other 99% of ocean plastic? Unsettling answers have recently begun to emerge. What we commonly see accumulating at the sea surface is "less than the tip of the iceberg, maybe a half of 1% of the total," says Erik Van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
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The Missing 99%: Why Can't We Find the Vast Majority of Ocean Plastic? More

The Missing 99%: Why Can't We Find the Vast Majority of Ocean Plastic?

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  • It sank (Score:3, Informative)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @11:21AM (#59576088) Journal
    End of story.

    • It's there. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @11:47AM (#59576164) Homepage Journal

      My hypothesis is that something about the plastic has shifted to make it invisible to our present methods of detection.

      I call plastic in this state "Dark Plastic." Based on our models 99% of the plastic in the universe qualifies as dark plastic.

      Someday we may develop a means of detecting it directly, and possibly describing it better. But for now, we accept it because it is the best way to explain the difference between observation and expectation.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by prefec2 ( 875483 )

        From the article:

        It is becoming apparent that plastic ends up in huge quantities in the deepest parts of the ocean, buried in sediment on the seafloor, and caught like clouds of dust deep in the water column.

        [...]it could fragment into such small pieces that it can barely be detected. [...] “[it becomes] more like a chemical dissolved in the water than floating in it”.

        So in a sense, it becomes invisible to our present abilities to measure plastics in the ocean.

        • buried in sediment on the seafloor

          Sounds almost exactly like many of the "carbon sequestration" people propose for saving the environment.

          And maybe like an artificial reef for tiny extremophiles that like to hide in that plastic.

          (not sure if /s or not)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mysidia ( 191772 )

            Sounds almost exactly like many of the "carbon sequestration" people propose for saving the environment.

            Now we just need to add a government mandated ratio of CO2 to be securely encapsulated in every piece of plastic produced. That way when people throw away the plastic, and it winds up the ocean, then the CO2 winds up buried in the sediment with the plastic.

            • Considering plastic is a hydrocarbon, then plenty of C and O2 are securely encapsulated in every piece already. Job done!!!!!

      • My hypothesis is that something about the plastic has shifted to make it invisible to our present methods of detection.

        Like being eaten by microbes?

      • Actually the sharks and whales ate it all [nationalgeographic.com]

        So this immediately offers the solution - breed more sharks or whales (preferably, just to be safe) to clean up the plastic for us. Unfortunately the Japanese and Icelanders are screwing with the plan by killing them all prematurely. Instead they should just wait for them to show up on the shores, recycle the plastic and eat the rest.

        • And then the sharks and whales and other plastic ingesting life forms die and sink.

          Here is the bright side: our oceanologists have discovered a natural carbon sequestration process that will eventually create a distinctive layer of sediment that will eventually become useful to future geologists in dating layers of mudstone, much as the iridium layer is useful in determining whether fossils are from before or after the Chicxulub Asteroid Impact!

          Either that or at some future time the weight of overlying

          • a natural carbon sequestration process that will eventually create a distinctive layer of sediment that will eventually become useful to future geologists in dating layers of mudstone, much as the iridium layer is useful in determining whether fossils are from before or after the Chicxulub Asteroid Impact!

            I hereby dub this layer...the Legocene!

        • Unfortunately the Japanese and Icelanders are screwing with the plan by killing them all prematurely. Instead they should just wait for them to show up on the shores, recycle the plastic and eat the rest.

          No, we just arrange for all Japanese and Icelanders who pass to be buried at Yucca Mountain, now that we're not using it for anything else.

    • [It sank}...End of story.

      Ifthis is the case, it would be the best possible outcome. Let's agree worldwide to require that disposible plastic items be made with a specific gravity of at least 1.1 . This would assure that plastic items not containing voids would not only sink but would remain near its source rather than voyaging to an oceanic gyre before disappearing.

      • As a scuba diver, I can tell you that a layer of plastic trash on the sea floor is NOT the best outcome.

        But I can see why you'd think that. It's not a problem if we can't see it, right?

        • As a scuba diver, I can tell you that a layer of plastic trash on the sea floor is NOT the best outcome.

          At abyssal depths it is. One of the advantages to the idea of sequestering carbon by seeding ocean gyres with alga-spawning nutrients is that if we can use a surface-matting species, it could drag floating plastics down with it as it dies off and sinks. The alga and the plastics would eventually become coal, and out of the biosphere.

  • How do we measure? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sentiblue ( 3535839 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @11:21AM (#59576090)
    So we claim that we can't find 99% of the plastic but if we can't find them, how do we know what we already found is 1%? If it's a prediction, how accurate/reliable would that be? I'm only asking because I'm clueless. This is not really my expertise of course.

    • Re:How do we measure? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @11:24AM (#59576104)

      What are you talking about? This is Slashdot, where an opinion based on false data is enough to present yourself as an expert in any field.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      At a guess it's a matter of estimating how much stuff we produce and how much we have kept track of on land. Then you look at how things end up in the water, extrapolate, and realize the known stuff in the water is off by two orders of magnitude compared to that estimate. THAT is troubling.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      So we claim that we can't find 99% of the plastic but if we can't find them, how do we know what we already found is 1%?

      We have pretty good estimates about how much plastic is made, and how much is recycled, and how much ends up in landfill. It's a bit more complicated than subtracting the last two from the first one but that's probably the first order estimate.

      • Do we really though? How accurate are the production estimates? Ours might (or might not) be very close, but those from China could be way off (they fake all sorts of stats). Estimates of how much gets recycled in the US and EU might (or might not) be very accurate, but what about everywhere else? China was taking a lot of our recyclables, but may have just been dumping it on the way back to China or putting it in landfills. As for how much ends up in landfills... That can't be easy to accurately esti

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by prefec2 ( 875483 )

      We can measure how much plastic ends up in the ocean, but when we search for it in the ocean we cannot detect that quantity. Plastic ends up in the ocean from different sources, e.g., rivers which can be monitored and freight which went over board which can be counted. Other sources are fisheries, "recycling" and micro plastic from beauty prdocuts. The question is where does is end up and how to measure it there. We have identified plastic patches on the ocean, shorelines, animal stomachs, food (e.g., micro

    • Presumably, because we can estimate fairly well what put production is and has been for the last few decades, we can also estimate how much escaped into the environment and how much was recycled or buried. The numbers would have a lot of wiggle room, but if the claim it that we can only find 1% of it, that is due to the expected amount we see around us being wildly lower than what we produced and trashed. If you drill down, it probably is not 1%, but some value between 0-5%.

      That is a guess on my part, but I

    • The estimates start from what is sold in an area of land, and what percent goes into the water. One of the biggest contributors is automobile tires. There have been a number of studies on this, there is good data on translating road miles into ocean microplastics. The same is true for the other large contributing sources.

      None of this is circular or backwards. We know that there are these large sources that are entering the oceans, and we've measured it in rivers and bays.

      And only a small percent of that is

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Communist China, Africa, South America... nations that have rivers and coast lines as their city/town dumps.
      The amount of material used globally to make plastic would be understood.
      The amount recovered from used plastic..
      The amount of new plastic products sold.
      What is found in the oceans, rivers..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Easy, we can estimate how much plastic we have made and how much plastic we have buried in sand fills. A measure plastic in the environment by testing and so there is a gap. People are actually paid to track rubbish because if we do not track and control rubbish, we will bury ourselves in it, some countries are already much worse than others.

  • With all that talk of huge amounts of ocean plastics, I've never witnessed any of that in reality. I was thinking there was some kind of plastic-conspiracy, but it turns out it's a bona-fide mystery!

    At least that explains it ;-)

    • Re:Well, that's refreshing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @11:32AM (#59576132)

      Where exactly have you been looking? any diver can tell you it's a real problem as they will have seen it first hand; I have everywhere from the Norwegian Arctic to the Southern Caribbean, across to the Red Sea and out past Papua New Guinea.

      Granted I'll admit, the one thing about the plastic problem that isn't being talked about sufficiently is that the majority of it is fishing gear; we're making fishing nests that can last tens of thousands of years, but that gets discarded routinely in less than 10 years. There's no reason for fishing gear not to return to biodegradable ropes and such as when fishing gear is lost to the oceans it keeps doing what it's designed for - killing fish. The net result is that fishermen are now competing with their own discarded gear for fish which is braindead and retarded.

      But the problem is definitely there, beaches and oceans do have an abundance of litter in them. If you go to the local beach and there isn't any then it's almost certainly because some people who live near the beach are actually doing beach cleanups as this is one of the most effective current ways to remove plastic from the oceans; pick it up when it washes up before it washes back in.

      I've been places where the beach cleanup every single week because during the 6 days between each cleanup the beach is literally full of plastic again.

      • I prefer to think of pitching non-biodegradeable items like plastic milk jugs and fishing nets to be creating environmentally sustainable long-term, low-income housing for fish. /s

      • There's no reason for fishing gear not to return to biodegradable ropes and such as when fishing gear is lost to the oceans it keeps doing what it's designed for - killing fish.

        Well, fishermen must have some reason to use it. Either it's cheaper, stronger or better in some measurable way.

        The more I think about it, the more I realize that the best way to further the goals of environmentalism is to build products that are better and more sustainable than the alternatives. We are almost there on renewable pow

        • Plastic nets are lighter and thus cheaper with less energy consumption both for production and transportation. They also don't biodegrade, that's a huge plus for stuff that's always wet.

          Biodegradable stuff is ludicrous because it biodegrades in timespans we don't want it to biodegrade.

          It's like those paper straws that biodegrade while you are still using them and then it turns out they're heavier, can't be composted without industrial equipment and more polluting than plastic in their lifecycle - and people

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They use them for the usual reasons we have a lot of problems on our planet - ignorant short termism.

          There's a view that because they're cheaper upfront that they're inherently a better option. That probably made sense for a while, but they didn't factor in that when they inevitably discard them (which again they do, typically in less than 5 years, nearly always in less than 10). As such the impact on fisheries of ghost gear is so significant that many fishing crews have just ended up out of business becaus

          • You're calling them ignorant but you aren't offering better solutions. If the plastic ones are cheaper upfront, we should be building an even cheaper bio-net, not lamenting the fact that people won't use a more expensive option.

            Coal was cheaper than natural gas at one point, now it's not. Pretty soon wind and solar will be cheaper than both of them. That's the path of progress -- make a better product and the rest sorts itself out naturally.

    • With all that talk of huge amounts of ocean plastics, I've never witnessed any of that in reality.

      It depends on winds and currents. Some places have very little, while other places have tons.

      If you go to Hawaii, you will see little plastic litter on the Big Island. It is too far south to catch the main westward arm of the Pacific gyre. But if you go to Oahu or Kauai, you will see plenty on the windward beaches, and you will find even more on the minor islands extending out toward Midway.

      Almost all the plastic trash on Hawaii's beaches comes from Asia.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        60 Minutes did a great exposé [cbsnews.com] on the problem.

        They went to Midway—a remote location by anyone's reckoning, and found "hundreds of tons of plastic have been retrieved from Midway in the last two decades." It's a real eye opener.

    • California doesn't seem to get much, but Hawaii I'd on the edge of the Pacific trash gyre, so on North Shore Oahu there are frequently bits of trash and plastic that get washed up on the beaches, some of it a hundred years old.

  • Well to be honest I ate some it in the tuna fish sandwich I just had for breakfast.

  • Found it. [google.com]

    All kidding aside, how about an international cash redemption program, like some states have for soda & beer bottles, for many/most plastic wrappers and containers that are likely to end up rivers and runoffs headed for the oceans?

    Sad little factoid: plastic bottles and disposable diapers reportedly take 450-500 years to break down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      cause most of where it comes from is tiny little shithole countries where they cant pay in electricity or running water

  • Until Cthulhu emerges wearing an plastic armor made out of all the missing plastic.

  • 'The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small'. Hey, on Brighton beach, all the bits of green bottles look like pretty rounded pebbles - what chance for softer plastics?
  • It's been known for a long time [nationalgeographic.com] that plastics break down a lot faster than people think, in the basic soup that is seawater. Add a little UV exposure, and most plastics will break down to their constituent elements in a matter of months, not decades. Polyethylene is what most grocery bags are made from, and it starts to break down in just 8 weeks in salt water [tandfonline.com]. It's not a surprise that most of it breaks down and dissipates - salt water is caustic, having a pH of 7.5-8.4.

    • Re:Not a mystery at all... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @12:52PM (#59576328)

      The article answers the question and your answer isn't it.

      Also, 60% of the sun's UV is gone in just 50cm of water, the idea that there's any meaningfully sufficient amount of UV to help degrade plastic reaching even a fraction of the plastic in the ocean is a scientifically invalid theory.

      There's also the problem of, even when it does break down, what it breaks down too - it's still harmful, it doesn't just vanish. It's just smaller.

  • It just disappears (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @12:08PM (#59576210)
    I own a property at a T intersection, with a long driveway that if you squint maybe could be the continuation of the ending road. It makes a turn at a pond, there is about a 30’ hill down to the water. Being in the city, something about this setup attracts people who will roll up and dump trash down the hill as if it magically disappears because there is water at the bottom. Bags of trash, alternators, a real lake trout mounted to a board, car batteries, even a heavy ass cast iron sink. I didn’t find the truck battery until it had disintegrated so badly flakes of the lead plates were everywhere and most of the plastic housing was long gone, boy was that fun to clean up. What goes on in people’s minds that think this kind of thing is acceptable? Half the stuff that gets dumped is free or you could get some pocket change for it you drove just three miles to the local trash/recycling yard.
    • How come you don't put up a camera and a sign, at a minimum? And sorry for your situation. People suck.
      • There actually is a sign. This has been going on for over 20 years and it wasn’t as cheap, easy, or practical to use them back then.

    • " What goes on in people’s minds that think this kind of thing is acceptable?"

      Out of sight, out of mind. The opposite of hoarding, I guess.

    • Re:It just disappears (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mysticgoat ( 582871 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @02:39PM (#59576700) Homepage Journal

      A fence is a wonderful thing.

      Or rent a backhoe and put in a tank trap of a roadside ditch.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      Sad thing is this happens in the boonies as well i have a similar situation like this at a corner of my farm three years ago i put up fence along the shore of the pond that faces the road to keep the junk from falling in (looks like crap but keeps my fish alive) cleaning up the crap that gets dumped there there is a full time job. over the years i hace seen construction waist wood , bits of broken cement etc. Household goods whole sofas, Tables a whole flipping dining room set! Electronic stuff more CRT T
    • I worked near a garbage dump, located in a largely rural desert area. The poor people that lived nearby regularly had to deal with dumping. I'm not sure if people showed up at the dump and it was closed, or if it cost too much for them, or what, but every couple days a new pile would show up somewhere along the stretch of road. Even if only one in a thousand people dump illegally, a population of city size will be ringed with dump sites.

    • In my area the most dumped items are tires. Probably because it costs $2 each to dispose of them properly. There they sit in the woods for the next 200 years as a perfect mosquito breeding device. Whenever I find a set on my property, not only do I have to clean it up, but *I* have to pay the 8 bucks to get rid of them.

      The penalty for dumping tires should be the loss of a thumb.

  • Also known as clickbait. "Unsettling answers have recently begun to emerge." But there's none in the post, just several reiterations of the same "question", why is it we're only seeing 1% of the ocean plastic. You fucking assholes. If you don't want to tell, then shut up. The internet is the first medium that enables anyone to talk to the world, and you act like your little piece of information is too special to just reveal. FUCK YOU.

  • Occam's Razor (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @07:25PM (#59577394)

    Because the assumption that it's there is put forth by people with an agenda.

  • It is hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat in it.

    • It is hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat in it.

      Schroding took this a step further by positing a cat which was both there and non-there at the same time.

      However, this is not relevant to the topic of micro-plastics.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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