Fishing at Sea Created at Least 75% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (theoceancleanup.com) 71
The Ocean Cleanup project has an announcement....
75% to 86% of plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch "originates from fishing activities at sea." Plastic emissions from rivers remain the main source of plastic pollution from a global ocean perspective. Plastic lost at sea has a higher chance of accumulating offshore than plastic emitted from rivers, leading to high concentrations of fishing-related debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [or GPGP]. New findings confirm the oceanic garbage patches cannot be cleaned solely through river interception and highlight the potentially vital role of fishing and aquaculture in ridding the world's oceans of plastic....
Our previous research has shown that almost half of the plastic mass in the GPGP is comprised of fishing nets and ropes (fibrous plastics used, for example, to make our The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses), with the remainder largely composed of hard plastic objects and small fragments. While the provenance of fishing nets is obvious, the origins of the other plastics in the GPGP have — until now — remained unclear.... In 2019, System 001/B, an early iteration of our cleanup technology, retrieved over 6,000 hard plastic debris items (larger than 5 cm) from the GPGP, providing our scientists with a unique opportunity to study larger objects not studied by previous research efforts. Each item was sorted into predefined item categories and inspected individually for evidence of country of origin (evidence may include language or text on the object, company name, brand, logo, or other identifying text such as an address or telephone number, etc.) and date of production. This comprehensive analysis revealed that roughly a third of the items were unidentifiable fragments. The other two-thirds was dominated by objects typically used in fishing, such as floats, buoys, crates, buckets, baskets, containers, drums, jerry cans, fish boxes, and eel traps.
Nearly half (49%) of plastic objects which could be dated were produced in the 20th century, with the oldest identified item being a buoy dating from 1966. This distribution is in line with our previous research showing significant occurrence of decades-old objects in the GPGP and re-emphasizes that the plastic in these garbage patches persists and can cause harm for lengthy periods, continually degrading into microplastics and becoming increasingly difficult to remove. In short, these results underline the urgent need to clean the GPGP; no matter what actions are taken to prevent riverine plastic emissions, the GPGP will persist and its content will continue to beach on remote islands, such as the Hawaiian Archipelago, and fragment into microplastics that will eventually sink to the seabed.
Surprisingly, countries near the edge of the northern Pacific (like the Philippines) weren't major contributors to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and instead their research blamed Japan (34%), China (32%), the Korean peninsula (10%), and the USA (7%). While they're not major sources of plastic from rivers, "they do carry out the majority of industrialized fishing activities in the GPGP region....
"[T]rawlers, fixed gear, and drifting longlines accounted for more than 95% of identified fishing activities that may account for emissions of floating plastic debris into the GPGP. "
75% to 86% of plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch "originates from fishing activities at sea." Plastic emissions from rivers remain the main source of plastic pollution from a global ocean perspective. Plastic lost at sea has a higher chance of accumulating offshore than plastic emitted from rivers, leading to high concentrations of fishing-related debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [or GPGP]. New findings confirm the oceanic garbage patches cannot be cleaned solely through river interception and highlight the potentially vital role of fishing and aquaculture in ridding the world's oceans of plastic....
Our previous research has shown that almost half of the plastic mass in the GPGP is comprised of fishing nets and ropes (fibrous plastics used, for example, to make our The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses), with the remainder largely composed of hard plastic objects and small fragments. While the provenance of fishing nets is obvious, the origins of the other plastics in the GPGP have — until now — remained unclear.... In 2019, System 001/B, an early iteration of our cleanup technology, retrieved over 6,000 hard plastic debris items (larger than 5 cm) from the GPGP, providing our scientists with a unique opportunity to study larger objects not studied by previous research efforts. Each item was sorted into predefined item categories and inspected individually for evidence of country of origin (evidence may include language or text on the object, company name, brand, logo, or other identifying text such as an address or telephone number, etc.) and date of production. This comprehensive analysis revealed that roughly a third of the items were unidentifiable fragments. The other two-thirds was dominated by objects typically used in fishing, such as floats, buoys, crates, buckets, baskets, containers, drums, jerry cans, fish boxes, and eel traps.
Nearly half (49%) of plastic objects which could be dated were produced in the 20th century, with the oldest identified item being a buoy dating from 1966. This distribution is in line with our previous research showing significant occurrence of decades-old objects in the GPGP and re-emphasizes that the plastic in these garbage patches persists and can cause harm for lengthy periods, continually degrading into microplastics and becoming increasingly difficult to remove. In short, these results underline the urgent need to clean the GPGP; no matter what actions are taken to prevent riverine plastic emissions, the GPGP will persist and its content will continue to beach on remote islands, such as the Hawaiian Archipelago, and fragment into microplastics that will eventually sink to the seabed.
Surprisingly, countries near the edge of the northern Pacific (like the Philippines) weren't major contributors to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and instead their research blamed Japan (34%), China (32%), the Korean peninsula (10%), and the USA (7%). While they're not major sources of plastic from rivers, "they do carry out the majority of industrialized fishing activities in the GPGP region....
"[T]rawlers, fixed gear, and drifting longlines accounted for more than 95% of identified fishing activities that may account for emissions of floating plastic debris into the GPGP. "
But ... But ... But (Score:1, Informative)
75% to 86% of plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch "originates from fishing activities at sea."
I have long suspected that this might be the case.
.... ENVIRONMENT!!
But, we still have to stop everyone in the U.S. from using plastic bags and plastic coffee cups because
Re: But ... But ... But (Score:5, Informative)
The GPGP isn't the entire ocean and not all ocean plastic ends up in the GPGP. As the article states:
"Plastic emissions from rivers remain the main source of plastic pollution from a global ocean perspective."
Plastic from rivers tends to stay coastal and eventually ends up back on land at shores/beaches.
So yes, stop using plastic bags and cups because it can end up in the environment - just not in the GPGP.
Re: But ... But ... But (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, score a political burn if it makes you feel better, I don't care. Just don't pollute.
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It won't end up in the environment if I throw it in the trash instead of throwing it on the ground as I have observed to be regular practice in progressive bastions like Austin TX, Manhattan, Philadelphia, and some others I'm sure I'm missing.
Correction: It won't end up in the environment if the garbage truck doesn't spill it while dumping your garbage bin because they've gone down to one garbage worker per truck like I've observed to be regular practice in progressive bastions like the Bay Area, or if the street sweepers actually go into all the suburban residential neighborhoods (which they don't).
Plastic bag bans are and always were feel-good bulls**t under the false premise that if you aren't feeling the pain personally, you must be harming
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No, a good first step is hiring good people at the top *and* firing dead weight in the middle. You can have a genius IQ who runs on 3 hours of sleep a night at the top, with too notch lieutenants under them, and it won't make a damn bit of difference if the shift supervisors in the middle still act like it's the Soviet Union.
Sometimes that's true, but firing them isn't usually the right answer unless they're genuinely incompetent. Usually the right answer is giving them something more useful to do. We don't need fewer government workers. We need them all doing something that contributes meaningfully to society.
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so this "progressive" town has come to the conclusion that the most efficent way of doing things is to still have 5 differentr trash companies running their diesel trucks through the town on every single day of the week as well as having people run their own vehichles to the dump on top of that.
this is a better option than just having the town contract one trash company to handle the town which would save time for everyone, more efficent on emissions, cheaper for citizens and just overall a far more logical
Re: But ... But ... But (Score:2)
Guess what? I too live in a progressive little town outside of Boston. It has curbside pickup.
There are towns all across the country, progressive and not, that don't have curbside pickup. That isn't a "progressive" thing, it's a small town thing, and where that small town puts its tax money.
Re: But ... But ... But (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was just a matter of cutting wasteful spending, then spending more money would blow through the inefficiency and solve the problems of society. What you need is a leader surrounded by a cabinet of the best scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who can come up with better ideas, not just do bad ideas cheaper.
Even at the level of President, "cabinet" really just means honorary policial positions based on very little.
As far as plastic bag bans, you talk about reusable bags as if they cause personal pain. Why is that?
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If it was just a matter of cutting wasteful spending, then spending more money would blow through the inefficiency and solve the problems of society. What you need is a leader surrounded by a cabinet of the best scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who can come up with better ideas, not just do bad ideas cheaper.
In an ideal world, a literal "technocracy" would do wonders. But not when you have to deal with other politicians who, for the sake of political capital or their own private interests, would stonewall your technically well-planned projects.
Some technological solutions fail because they don't take into account the political and social dimensions of the problem they were designed to solve. Yes, the pandemic is one such case.
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If it was just a matter of cutting wasteful spending, then spending more money would blow through the inefficiency and solve the problems of society. What you need is a leader surrounded by a cabinet of the best scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who can come up with better ideas, not just do bad ideas cheaper.
That's the thing, a lot of ideas aren't badly conceived; they're badly implemented. And the ones that are badly conceived usually weren't obviously bad until they tried them and they didn't work. What's needed in those situations is coming up with a better idea and then replacing the bad approach with a better approach.
Also, another thing we need are smart people at the top of the executive branches to veto bad ideas, and a requirement that laws be small enough that a veto doesn't cause chaos. These gian
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Plastic bag bans are and always were feel-good bulls**t under the false premise that if you aren't feeling the pain personally, you must be harming the environment.
Since when is re-using plastic bags a cause of pain?
What causes me pain is seeing needless waste and littering. People are so freaking lazy. It is a while since I travelled by train, but what would get my righteous steam up is people just leaving their rubbish behind for someone else to tidy up. I actually stopped one guy who left an empty drink bottle, that he had just taken out of his rucksack to take a drink. Excuse me, mate, can't you put the empty bottle back in your rucksack, then put it in the bin wh
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Plastic bag bans are and always were feel-good bulls**t under the false premise that if you aren't feeling the pain personally, you must be harming the environment.
Since when is re-using plastic bags a cause of pain?
I don't honestly know why people don't reuse bags. I'd imagine there are a lot of different reasons — not wanting the bags to take up space in their car all the time, forgetting to pick them up before leaving the house, general laziness.... Personally, I find it uncomfortable carrying something into a store knowing that they sell that item in the store. So do I buy bags from Walmart to use at Target and vice versa? It just feels icky. So most of the time, I don't use bags at all; I roll the cart
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People suck. People will always suck.
This is unfortunately true, and anybody who thinks humans are angels is an idiot. I don't think most people are deliberate fiends, though. We push the boundaries, and that upsets other people. But if you don't push the boundaries, there would never be any progress. How about pushing the boundary that people with dark skins are actually, you know, people, and not beasts of burden. What strikes me is that the economy did not collapse when slavery was abolished, and politics did not descend into chaos when wom
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In my liberal town we banned most disposable plastic shopping bags, and in my State we added deposit on almost everything, even water bottles. The trash went way, way down.
Re:But ... But ... But (Score:4, Informative)
Plastic pollution isn't just what you see in the Pacific Garbage Patch. The plastic we toss out on land gets pulverized into very small particles (search for it, your browser has a search function, you type in the words and it returns stuff...don't forget to hit the return after typing) and transported by rivers to the sea, then into the fish, then into you. Yum.
Now do you see a reason to stop using plastic bags and coffee cups? Yes, because .... ENVIRONMENT!!
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It's long been understood that the GPGP is FAR too small - only about 1% (0.1%? I don't recall exactly) of the plastic that enters the ocean ends up there. It's been assumed that the rest is either lost to photodegradation (best case), or more likely gets weighted down with sea life and sinks to the bottom, where it may wreak havoc on sea floor ecosystems for millenia to come.
Then again, the deep ocean can be a bit calorie-starved so perhaps something there will evolve to eat it more aggressively than has
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Don't forget the drinking straws!
Seriously, this effort to use the GPGP as an excuse to banish all plastic drinking straws (in favor of sometimes providing inferior paper drinking straws) geared up practically right as I had children... Small children who are incapable of drinking from a cup without spilling, without using something like a straw, while also somehow being incapable of using a straw without chewing on it in the process. Plastic straws can mostly survive this. Paper ones really can't.
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Oh, geez. They gave you an inferior drinking straw!
Small children who are incapable of drinking from a cup without spilling, without using something like a straw, while also somehow being incapable of using a straw without chewing on it in the process
a) That doesn't explain all the adults who can't seem to drink without straws, ie. the majority of straw-users.
b) I bet there's a really easy solution, eg. a different lid with a drinking hole.
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b) I bet there's a really easy solution, eg. a different lid with a drinking hole.
Starbucks did this, and it absolutely solves the problem. (though it still got criticized for ultimately using more plastic than the old lid+straw)
However, basically NOBODY ELSE did it. Instead, they just refuse to give you a lid or straw, and hope you don't spill the drink everywhere.
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Starbucks did this, and it absolutely solves the problem.
They serve coffee to small children?
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What happened to the time honoured tradition of sippy cups?
When I was growing up, straws were a luxury - we definitely didn't have them at home. So whats changed these days?
Re: But ... But ... But (Score:2)
Indeed. When my son was of the age he couldn't drink without spilling (so, less than 2 years old, generally) he got his own bottle or sippy cup with him. With his own drink.
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Because being an environmentalist isn't about solving problems. It's about how much you *care* about the planet, and nothing says "I care" like deliberately punishing yourself.
Wonder about their results (Score:5, Informative)
This flies in the face of everything else I've read about plastic pollution in our oceans. I've always understood that the Philippines was far and away the largest contributor https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review.com] (scroll to "Top 10 Countries that Release the Most Plastic into the Ocean (tons 2021)").
Re: Wonder about their results (Score:4, Insightful)
The two statements arenâ(TM)t mutually exclusive. The âoeGreat Pacific Garbage Patchâ is a specific area of the ocean thatâ(TM)s surrounded by the North Pacific Gyre. The Philippines and other countries could still be emitting a large portion of the plastic in the oceans as a whole, itâ(TM)s just that itâ(TM)s not making it to the study area.
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It's still surprising given that both the Philippines and this garbage patch are both in the Pacific.
Re: Wonder about their results (Score:5, Informative)
It's still surprising given that both the Philippines and this garbage patch are both in the Pacific.
The current of the North Pacific Gyre is on the eastern side of the Philippines. The big cities of the Philippines are on the western side facing the South China Sea or the Sulu Sea.
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Ah, I didnt know that about the Philippines. That does seem to be a reasonable explanation.
Re: Wonder about their results (Score:5, Informative)
I think an important bit of info in the article is that according to their modeling plastics that emanate from land-based sources tend to stay coastal and eventually come back to land, plastics that are emitted at sea tend to stay at sea. So the the GPGP is less sensitive to total oceanic plastic emissions by a country and more sensitive to deep sea plastic emissions by it's fishing industry.
An interesting question may be whether plastic emissions from Hawaii, which is in the middle of the NP Gyre, would end up in the GPGP or still stay coastal?
Re:Fundamental Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Informative)
You obviously didn't bother to read the study. The Ocean Cleanup project didn't perform the analysis. It was done by a group of scientists, it was published in a peer-reviewed journal, and they described their methodology in detail.
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Their conclusions go against their own suppositions. I think you're too hung up on research that is intentionally biased, and funded specifically for that purpose. There is no bias in saying that there's a huge patch of garbage in the middle of the ocean, that they happen to be cleaning up. They'd be cleaning it whether they figure out the source or not.
Regardless, the solution is not for them to stop their research, it's for more people to do their own.
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It does, but that's why science works the way it does. We don't have "the truth" with the science, in spite of idiotic narrative we had been fed during the pandemic. We have something that is as close to being correct as possible with current observations and hypotheses that were proven true through those observations. As you cannot observe anything in every possible relevant state at every possible relevant position at every possible relevant time, observations are always of lower resolution than objective
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The sad part is that it still needs to be explained, even on /.
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Considering the propaganda blitz in the West about "the Science" as related to pandemic, it's no wonder most people are unaware of what science actually is.
And those who are learned to keep their mouths shut. For a lot of those who tried to remind us about it had their lives destroyed by the propaganda machine.
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Sigh.... Yes that's why I didnt say the above article was wrong. Pointing out new data flies in the face of old data is not anti science.
I suppose you got to get up on that high horse and lecture someone on the virtues of science though so we got that out of this conversation at least.
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Unsustainable human overpopulation results in the fishing industry torturing to death [sciencefocus.com] about 2 trillion fish every year [forbes.com].
Less wild ocean fish for me thanks. (Score:2)
I was already wondering about the environmental impact of farmed salmon which is part of my local grocer's salad menu, (Smoked Salmon Salad), which I enjoy a few times a year, (its too sour otherwise methinks).
Re:Less wild ocean fish for me thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now feel free to eat whatever you want but fish (especially fish lower on the food chain) is still the best animal protein for you health wise due the presence of large amounts of omega3s. As far as I understand it the farmed stuff is still considered dirtier than wild as well due to the practice of using leftover bits of fish that cant be sold as food for the next batch of fish. This practice is known to concentrate pollutants over time.
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Farmed fish takes the same already dirty ocean water and makes it way dirtier. Wild caught fish may have sustainability issues, but it's way better to eat than almost all the farmed stuff.
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Not that I'm really into fish anyway
That's like saying you don't care about bees.
We live in an interdependent ecosystem. If the oceans get fucked up, we all die.
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Not that I'm really into fish anyway
That's like saying you don't care about bees.
We live in an interdependent ecosystem. If the oceans get fucked up, we all die.
Earlier it would have been more clear and accurate, had I written, "Not that I'm really into *eating* fish anyway." And I try to support healthy oceans.
If I've learned anything today, the 'smoked salmon salad' I like is not as healthy for the planet as the McDonald's filet o' fish sandwich, which is pretty much the only other fish I eat with any frequency.
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I was already wondering about the environmental impact of farmed salmon ...
Though farmed fish might seem better for the environment than getting the fish in the wild, you have to ask what the fish are fed on. It ain't rice and lentils. In Europe. a major source of fish food is anchovies, hoovered from the seas off Portugal. This may or may not be sustainable. I don't actually know.
Re: Less wild ocean fish for me thanks. (Score:2)
Fish farms are wildly unsustainable. From the antibiotics to the parasites, from the horrible feeding practices to the pollution of the wild population with mono cultural DNA and disease, it's all a huge mess.
But it's a profitable mess, so it will continue until the damage is too great to ignore.
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This makes me very sad, because I like eating fish.
How does fish farming compare to rearing cattle? That can also be very environmentally damaging.
this is why we do science (Score:4)
As other commenters have shown, the assumptions that have pointed fingers at various countries regarding the GPCP are, it turns out, incorrect. We assumed that river-emitted pollution would dominate everywhere in the ocean, a reasonable baseline assumption, but the actual answer was more nuanced because ocean currents aren't fully mixing.
For me the most interesting part of the article (I know, I know) was that a significant fraction of the identifiable debris found was at least 20 years old, with the oldest documented bit from 1966. It appears that it is not the case that tossing something overboard means it quicklyi sinks to the ocean floor, but, rather, plastics lost at sea contribute to pollution levels for decades.
Re: this is why we do science (Score:4)
Along the lines of doing science, has there been any related studies where tagged pollution (I'm imagining gps tagged) is emitted from rivers vs deep sea to see where it goes? I remember the rubber duck accident that turned into an experiment in the North Pacific awhile back. But I guess I'm surprised this notion of "coastal emissions stay coastal" wasn't already known.
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I think the message is that plastic waste is very persistent. Decades at least. I would say centuries, but plastics have not been in existence for that long. If you think of previous alternatives to plastics, e.g. wood, paper, cotton fabrics, etc., these things, when discarded, are digested by bacteria, and eventually contribute to the nutrition of other living things. I have not heard of that ever happening with most plastics. They are by and large indigestible.
Re: this is why we do science (Score:2)
They are currently starting to show up in our blood. At the same time some people complain about an unexplained rise of cancer and lack of fertility in the West.
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The rise of cancer could be because people are living longer. Though this is not universal, cancer tends to be a disease of old age. So when you fix stuff like malnutrition and heart disease, you end up with old folks with cancer. I am writing here as an old bloke who did not quite die from throat cancer. The cause was obvious, which was a lifetime of smoking. The doctors did not have to point that out. Pretty obvious really, so they just got on with the expert throat cutting, which is why I pay my taxes. I
regarding nets - (Score:2)
Nets are a major cost to fishers at all levels. In third world countries, a net can be the most expensive possession of a fishing family. For the big tuna seiners, the net can cost well over a million dollars.
As a result, hours of fishing results in hours of net repairs. On shore the net is spread and everyone joins in repairs, children, seniors, aunts and neighbors. It is a skill that all must learn. Every effort is made to preserve the net.
None of the net materials in the Garbage Patch were carelessly tos
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Bravo! Bravo! clap clap clap....
But we were told it was the straws! (Score:2)
I thought that everyone in North America and Europe threw their straws in the river and they ended up in the ocean? Thatâ(TM)s why there was a huge push to paper straws?
There were pictures of turtles and everything.
Did the turtles lie to us?
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That one turtle kept laughing all the way to the bank. The river bank, i.e.
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Forgot (Score:2)
Forgot to mention fishing activities at sea by ASIAN countries.
Location matters (Score:2)
This is not surprising with the key factor being they are limiting the finding to the content of the garbage patch and they are using weight rather than item count.
I'm currently obsessed with picking up beach plastic - 4000 lbs and counting - in Washington state. The beaches are located on the northwest shore of Puget Sound, the south shore of the strait of Juan de Fuca and the northern Pacific coast.
Each area has dramatically different composition. But in all three the general statement that fishing and aq
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I'm a serious paper straw hater, but this is a high-quality comment, please mod up. Always out of points the day a great one shows up...
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And that's why you should not eat fish (Score:2)
And that's why you should not eat fish.
Yours,
Dr. Meat
The polluter pays (Score:2)
The way industrial economics works is that you use stuff, make a profit, and somebody else pays to tidy up the resulting mess. When you work that out to its logical conclusion, that somebody else is actually you, but only rather indirectly. That somebody else might be some brown-skinned kid in a far off country. It is up to you whether you care about that kid.
Getting down to the proper economics, what is the real cost of a disposable plastic bag? What you have to factor in is the entire supply chain leading
Yet another problem due to consumption of animals (Score:1)
We do not benefit from animal products. There's no reason to do this at all.
There's a possible exception for the very few humans who genuinely still live in traditional ways, but it really does not apply for those who live in a highly urbanised fashion, wear plastic clothes and travelling in jeeps to hunt by rifle.