At first I was against this, but then I realised that this, even if it fails, is the kind of audacious, well publicised scheme that we need.
It's ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff, by definition of being a cleanup op, but hell, they're trying and I hope they work out how to make a meaninful difference.
Yes; it has been discovered in the daytime sky. But that's not the point. We aren't resource constrained. We're not struggling to eat; we have diseases of abundance. We're not running out of oil; we're drowning in plastic. It's not our resources that are lacking but our conscientiousness and enthusiasm for things worthwhile.
The reason doesn't have much to do with lack of resources. Is there a reason why you ignored my answer to your fusion question? Solar power provides more energy than our civilization needs.
In the same way, you could claim we have no plastics problem, because we don't need plastic. That would be the same logic as saying we don't need oil because we could use solar power.
Maybe in theory it is possible, but it is not a reality yet.
And it is not even proven that it is possible, either. Solar power is not zero impact, either, it may just have a slightly smaller CO2 footprint than oil.
Of course it’s proven possible. Are you one of those types that doesn’t think something is shown to be possible until it is already the entire status quo everywhere? At that point, there’s not even any discussion about its “possibility” because it’s the status quo. Solutions exist for these things and whining about how things are not yet ideal, how this earnest effort to clean up should be discouraged because it might backfire or how solar power might not be “proven” even though you can go out and literally buy solar panels (cheaply! And with quick energy payback time!) to charge your car with instead of using oil... ...this is not actually productive. Find a solution and do it.
You can buy cheap solar panels - cheap, because they are produced with energy created from fossil fuels.
You are hopelessly naive. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, solar panels exist. That doesn't prove you can fulfill all our energy needs using them. And it doesn't tell you anything about their CO2 footprint.
There is also the tiny problem of energy at night, that has no good solution yet.
So far fish seem to be doing fine, though. Humans, too. I haven't heard of any mass extinction events because of plastic consumption.
There actually lots of other toxic and non-digestible things floating in the sea, not the least life forms who defend against predators by producing toxins. Therefore it seems unlikely that plastic will be that much worse.
Oh look! #14 has a handle attached, and we can use it to hoist all the other pieces into this big plastic boat, which then heads back home. There are zero pieces of garbage in the sea.
> A ship towed the U-shaped barrier from San Francisco to the patch in September to trap the plastic. But during the four months at sea, the boom broke apart under constant waves and wind and the boom was not retaining the plastic it caught.
It has a few goofy phrases ("unscheduled learning opportunity") but it seems like a pretty solid writeup. Their subsequent update also says they recovered both pieces of the boom and ~2 tons of garbage, so not a smashing success but it also could have been much worse.
In other news: After a 3 week charter to collect plastics from the nort-pacific gyre the Ocean Voyages Institute has arrived in Honolulu on board Sailing Vessel Kwai, with 40 tons of derelict fishing gear and consumer plastics. The vessel came home with room to spare and after more funds are raised, The Ocean Voyages Institute may charter Kwai or another ship for a longer expedition to collect a larger mass of plastic. It will probably be Kwai again, as she and her crew are specially suited to this kind of work; they often load and unload cargo in places with no-where to anchor.
The OVI has been able to collect large quantities of plastic, very quickly, because they distributed GPS trackers to various vessels of opportunity. Such vessels volunteered to attach trackers to any debris they encounter while traversing the pacific, allowing the Kwai to sail straight for large clumps of plastic debris.
The ocean plastics issue is a lot more complicated than these cleanup efforts make it seem. Large debris are just the tip of the iceberg. Microplastics, consumption of single-use plastics, the U.N.'s estimate that 600 tons of netting enter the ocean each year, etc. etc. (I want to emphasize those etc's because this list is quite long)
Restoring and protecting the world's oceans requires more resources and I am honestly surprised how difficult it is to raise money to do the things which are required to sustain human life on earth. Utterly baffled. We launch satellites into space to broadcast 4K boxing to the last mile, but engineering new packaging materials, and zero-waste systems for distributing those packages is just beyond the pale.
It is hard to estimate. When they remove the ghost net, any non-entangled animals will scatter. The OVI only found one dead, entangled swordfish during their operation. Mary Crowley thinks that entangled animals get eaten fairly quickly so it's hard to know how many have died in the nets. It still is not known why there were so few entangled animals found on this voyage.
I have a suspicion that when The Ocean Cleanup says "the device had no environmental impact" they really are saying they did not find any entangled animals in the ghost nets they concentrated.
Does marine animal bones sink with no flesh? Is it heavy enough to sink nets?
It could be a matter of a dumping ground for nets in one place and it floats around oceans while the unlucky animals getting caught in net bring net to sea floor.
It depends on the type and size of the net. Dermochelys coriacea can weight 500Kg easily
a) An obvious solution that would protect fisheries, and save the lives of thousands of marine birds, turtles, seals and whales, would be to change by international laws the matherial used in nets to made it more degradable in some points
b) Another partial solution could be to build shredder ships
c) And I suppose that anything that would replace part of the expensive fuel spent by very big war ships (aircraft carriers, etc) would save millions of dollars. Equipate this floating cities with secondary motors able to burn plastic instead gas would increase dramatically the autonomy of those ships, reduce the temptation to get ride of the garbage dumping it in the open sea, and would benefit also the environment, something that can be used to improve PR also.
b) and c) could be combined in one solution allowing the shredder ships reducing their cost per hour at sea
All they would need is to equipate ships with big particle filters like black boxes to store ALL the dioxins and noxious substances until real decontamination in appropiate ports. Modern cars have yet this technology.
Some plastics are reciclable and could be sold and used as an economic resource instead as garbage.
We have yet a microplastics problem in any case, but could deal with it later if we assure first that turtles, sharks, swordfishes, seals and dolphins will not go extinct by being tangled in ghost nets. This would alleviate the huge fishing pressure over all valuable species of fishes also. Two problems solved, one remains.
Ghost nets gradually wipe top predators that reproduce slowly. This has a noxious and permanent effect in the ecosystems, hitting specially hard the animals affected more by microplastics: small larvae and small fishes.
In marine ecosystems there is always a cascading card house effect. More predators not tangled in nets -> more big fishes eaten -> more small fishes survive. Even more important, more turtles alive to eat jellyfishes (wich gobble fish larvae and eggs but ignore microplastics). In the end the current influence of microplastics over small species would decrease compensated by a lower predation pressure.
Heavy cetaceans on the other hand can store incredible amounts of nasty substances on its fat for many years. Microplastics would affect them less than the current ball of 50 Kg of bags blocking the stomach and leaking chemicals.
Small plastic portions could have much more probability of passing trough the digestive system of big vertebrates without blocking it also. Would be safer for ship navigation also (Lose nets can tangle in boat propellers).
Nope. This work only counts species catched, involved in fisheries. The real value would be much higher when we include unedible, mesopelagic and abyssal fishes.
Their haul was mostly ghost nets and its hard to trace the origin of those. There are people on Oahu who have voluntarily taken custody of the nets to try and figure out what to do with them. H-power wants to use them as fuel. A very small amount are being turned into sculptures.
The rest are going off to other parts of the world. The reuse problem is still unsolved.
Single-use plastics and the like are not the problem, and the West does not have to feel guilty about the plastic in the ocean; the vast majority comes from Asian rivers. The only reason why any plastic enters the ocean from the US can be attributed to littering and a lack of people cleaning up litter.
That said, a large chunk of waste is also exported abroad, and nobody knows (or, wants to know) what happens then - no longer our problem.
I think the correct solution here has got to be a combination of shifting to reuse of materials, not recycling (think standard size containers) and engineering of bacteria/organisms that can break down existing plastics, even in the deep ocean, perhaps in the stomachs of krill, minnows or other tiny foragers. Nothing else will get it all, the scale of the problem is just too diffuse.
Which is why “recycle” has always been placed after “reduce” and “reuse” in the triangle. Everyone just ignored those other two because recycling doesn’t need as much of a lifestyle change, and if you’re a company you don’t want your customers to reduce or reuse.
This sort of thing is not helpful in the fight against plastic waste.
It gives the impression that such a thing could make even the slightest dent, and it gives those who sell single use plastics a reason to say "see, it's under control!".
"There isn't really a problem is there? Aren't there boats that pick the plastic up out of the ocean?" - silly as that might sound to you and I, that's the core message that many would pick up on, and other would amplify.
It's pointless and sends a false message that "cleaning up the problem" is even vaguely possible. That false message will be picked up and amplified by "big plastic" companies like CocaCola to convince the public that they aren't in fact ruining the earth with their single use plastics.
It has people like you convinced that it's possible to "clean up what is out there". It's not.
If the tap broke in your kitchen and poured thousands of gallons of water on to the floor every minute, would you start mopping that up like crazy, as fast and hard as you can? Or would you first turn off the tap?
I disagree that it is giving a false message. I is also saying: „there is a need to clean our oceans because of the endless plastic.“ shocking amount of plastic might slowly help to change the mindsets.
I will take time - maybe two generations - and then these children’s will understand that throwing plastic away (like you see in many countries) is just bad. I think it gives everyone deep down a sense of accountability...
Don't worry, the people that you are worried about are trapped in a media bubble that is warning them that their right to single use plastic is going to be taken away because of people in China that litter.
I think that projects like this will put hard numbers to how difficult and expensive "mopping" is and possibly learn something from the trash that is being collected.
Then we know that each plastic straw, bag or bottle costs this much to collect from the ocean and we know that x percent end up there. Then use the data to support initiatives to inform policy.
I'm not at all trapped in a media bubble. I simply stated that I support multiple attacks on the very real and existing problem. Every ton of prevented plastic in the water is a net gain. Every ton of removed plastic from the water is a net gain.
I never said I was convinced that the cleanup is easy or even possible - I said we have to start trying it. And I support projects which are at least trying - no matter if they attack the source or the symptom of the problem.
While some people focus on changing policies can and should do impact at the source of the problem, other people focus on engineering solutions for fighting the existing problem. Not everyone can become a policy maker/politician - so please cut those at least trying some slack.
When I visited the very remote pacific ocean, there was plastic everywhere. On remote islands, every ten feet were plastic bottles and garbage, in the water - everywhere.
The idea that any number of dedicated garbage collection ships, given all the resources in the world, could clear this up, is just completely ridiculous.
>>> It won't clear itself up
And neither will we - it's impossible, and distracts from the real task at hand which is to stop the flow, stop the creation of it.
To solve the problem we must relentlessly point the spotlight back on the companies that are creating this endless flow of garbage.
Both? The first of the Three-R's is Reduce. It's always more effective to prevent a problem than to clean up after it, but that certainly doesn't imply something shouldn't be cleaned up...
No environmental impact?! Its straining the top 3 meters of the ocean. Almost the entire mass of sea life is in the top 1 meter of ocean. This seems to be in the category of "preserving the happy human-appreciated creatures and ignoring everything else". Like saving whales or chimps, but not caring about insects, worms, frogs etc. which are the bulk of the ecosystem.
And anybody got a citation for the harm done by this 'garbage patch'? Not just documentation of its existence. What effect, beyond the positive one of providing anchor points for algae etc in the life-rich upper meter.
The garbage patch is a myth it doesn't exist. The garbage doesn't clump into a patch it spreads across the whole ocean about a foot under the surface.
Calling it a garbage patch make it sound like not a big deal, some one can just go out in a boat and clean it, the problem is the whole ocean is filled with tiny plastic particles its a literal ocean of garbage not patch.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadhttps://www.google.com/search?q=garbage+patch+trap+guardian
It's ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff, by definition of being a cleanup op, but hell, they're trying and I hope they work out how to make a meaninful difference.
Also, if it works, why not dump more plastic into the sea. After all, apparently we can simply fish it out again.
And even if we were only attention constrained, a project that doesn't work would draw attention away from more promising ideas.
In comparison, plastic is actually mostly just an aesthetic issue.
In the same way, you could claim we have no plastics problem, because we don't need plastic. That would be the same logic as saying we don't need oil because we could use solar power.
Maybe in theory it is possible, but it is not a reality yet.
And it is not even proven that it is possible, either. Solar power is not zero impact, either, it may just have a slightly smaller CO2 footprint than oil.
You are hopelessly naive. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, solar panels exist. That doesn't prove you can fulfill all our energy needs using them. And it doesn't tell you anything about their CO2 footprint.
There is also the tiny problem of energy at night, that has no good solution yet.
It's like saying burning oil is mostly bad because of the visual aspect of smog. It's not.
https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=microplastic+endocrine+d...
https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=microplastic+effect+on+h...
There actually lots of other toxic and non-digestible things floating in the sea, not the least life forms who defend against predators by producing toxins. Therefore it seems unlikely that plastic will be that much worse.
I think it's a valid reply to overly dismissive GP.
> A ship towed the U-shaped barrier from San Francisco to the patch in September to trap the plastic. But during the four months at sea, the boom broke apart under constant waves and wind and the boom was not retaining the plastic it caught.
It has a few goofy phrases ("unscheduled learning opportunity") but it seems like a pretty solid writeup. Their subsequent update also says they recovered both pieces of the boom and ~2 tons of garbage, so not a smashing success but it also could have been much worse.
The OVI has been able to collect large quantities of plastic, very quickly, because they distributed GPS trackers to various vessels of opportunity. Such vessels volunteered to attach trackers to any debris they encounter while traversing the pacific, allowing the Kwai to sail straight for large clumps of plastic debris.
The ocean plastics issue is a lot more complicated than these cleanup efforts make it seem. Large debris are just the tip of the iceberg. Microplastics, consumption of single-use plastics, the U.N.'s estimate that 600 tons of netting enter the ocean each year, etc. etc. (I want to emphasize those etc's because this list is quite long)
Restoring and protecting the world's oceans requires more resources and I am honestly surprised how difficult it is to raise money to do the things which are required to sustain human life on earth. Utterly baffled. We launch satellites into space to broadcast 4K boxing to the last mile, but engineering new packaging materials, and zero-waste systems for distributing those packages is just beyond the pale.
One reason for The Ocean Cleanup's current work is to get the larger parts now, before they degrade to microplastics.
I have a suspicion that when The Ocean Cleanup says "the device had no environmental impact" they really are saying they did not find any entangled animals in the ghost nets they concentrated.
It could be a matter of a dumping ground for nets in one place and it floats around oceans while the unlucky animals getting caught in net bring net to sea floor.
It depends on the type and size of the net. Dermochelys coriacea can weight 500Kg easily
a) An obvious solution that would protect fisheries, and save the lives of thousands of marine birds, turtles, seals and whales, would be to change by international laws the matherial used in nets to made it more degradable in some points
b) Another partial solution could be to build shredder ships
c) And I suppose that anything that would replace part of the expensive fuel spent by very big war ships (aircraft carriers, etc) would save millions of dollars. Equipate this floating cities with secondary motors able to burn plastic instead gas would increase dramatically the autonomy of those ships, reduce the temptation to get ride of the garbage dumping it in the open sea, and would benefit also the environment, something that can be used to improve PR also.
b) and c) could be combined in one solution allowing the shredder ships reducing their cost per hour at sea
All they would need is to equipate ships with big particle filters like black boxes to store ALL the dioxins and noxious substances until real decontamination in appropiate ports. Modern cars have yet this technology.
Some plastics are reciclable and could be sold and used as an economic resource instead as garbage.
Just my 2 Cents
Shredding the nets? Wouldn't this just make it a microplastics issue?
Ghost nets gradually wipe top predators that reproduce slowly. This has a noxious and permanent effect in the ecosystems, hitting specially hard the animals affected more by microplastics: small larvae and small fishes.
In marine ecosystems there is always a cascading card house effect. More predators not tangled in nets -> more big fishes eaten -> more small fishes survive. Even more important, more turtles alive to eat jellyfishes (wich gobble fish larvae and eggs but ignore microplastics). In the end the current influence of microplastics over small species would decrease compensated by a lower predation pressure.
Heavy cetaceans on the other hand can store incredible amounts of nasty substances on its fat for many years. Microplastics would affect them less than the current ball of 50 Kg of bags blocking the stomach and leaking chemicals.
Small plastic portions could have much more probability of passing trough the digestive system of big vertebrates without blocking it also. Would be safer for ship navigation also (Lose nets can tangle in boat propellers).
The rest are going off to other parts of the world. The reuse problem is still unsolved.
That said, a large chunk of waste is also exported abroad, and nobody knows (or, wants to know) what happens then - no longer our problem.
They should disperse iron oxide dust downstream while they're at it.
It gives the impression that such a thing could make even the slightest dent, and it gives those who sell single use plastics a reason to say "see, it's under control!".
"There isn't really a problem is there? Aren't there boats that pick the plastic up out of the ocean?" - silly as that might sound to you and I, that's the core message that many would pick up on, and other would amplify.
A quixotic fools errand.
- Stop dumping/polluting waters
- Clean up what is out there
Boyan and his project cater for the second one and they're trying to solve a real, existing problem. Others are trying to solve other problems.
What's wrong with that?
It's pointless and sends a false message that "cleaning up the problem" is even vaguely possible. That false message will be picked up and amplified by "big plastic" companies like CocaCola to convince the public that they aren't in fact ruining the earth with their single use plastics.
It has people like you convinced that it's possible to "clean up what is out there". It's not.
If the tap broke in your kitchen and poured thousands of gallons of water on to the floor every minute, would you start mopping that up like crazy, as fast and hard as you can? Or would you first turn off the tap?
I will take time - maybe two generations - and then these children’s will understand that throwing plastic away (like you see in many countries) is just bad. I think it gives everyone deep down a sense of accountability...
I think that projects like this will put hard numbers to how difficult and expensive "mopping" is and possibly learn something from the trash that is being collected. Then we know that each plastic straw, bag or bottle costs this much to collect from the ocean and we know that x percent end up there. Then use the data to support initiatives to inform policy.
While some people focus on changing policies can and should do impact at the source of the problem, other people focus on engineering solutions for fighting the existing problem. Not everyone can become a policy maker/politician - so please cut those at least trying some slack.
This is the pacific ocean - it takes up about a third of the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pacific_Ocean_-_en.png
When I visited the very remote pacific ocean, there was plastic everywhere. On remote islands, every ten feet were plastic bottles and garbage, in the water - everywhere.
The idea that any number of dedicated garbage collection ships, given all the resources in the world, could clear this up, is just completely ridiculous.
>>> It won't clear itself up
And neither will we - it's impossible, and distracts from the real task at hand which is to stop the flow, stop the creation of it.
To solve the problem we must relentlessly point the spotlight back on the companies that are creating this endless flow of garbage.
Started taking it out, or started not putting it in the first place?
And anybody got a citation for the harm done by this 'garbage patch'? Not just documentation of its existence. What effect, beyond the positive one of providing anchor points for algae etc in the life-rich upper meter.
Calling it a garbage patch make it sound like not a big deal, some one can just go out in a boat and clean it, the problem is the whole ocean is filled with tiny plastic particles its a literal ocean of garbage not patch.
Where he's floating adrift and have him run into one of this things pylons. They could have him pop-up on a screen in a monitoring lab.