Pacific Trash Vortex! Wow! I had no idea it was this bad!

[Peter_C]

We dove one of our local sites last weekend. It is pretty remote with no cities withing 40 miles (Oh my there is no cell phone service). My flashlight reflected off of something bright blue. When I went to inspect it I found a small piece of plastic. It broke apart in my hand and it was obviously from a larger piece to begin with. The plastic I found will be there for another 500 years just becoming smaller and smaller. Possibly being eaten by a creature that in turn gets eaten by a larger creature...maybe it was the fish dinner on your plate. It made me sad Even my dive buddy, who has probably never seen this thread, realized the significance of the find.

Since we had just had a big storm, I walked up and down the beach...errr rocks and cleaned up all of the garbage. The least we should be doing is trying to keep plastic in the recycle bin/garbage and pickup garbage when we do find it. Start picking up garbage in your own neighborhood and watch your neighbors start doing the same...it is contagious, cleaning up that is. People learn by example.

I dropped this thread into my sig line awhile ago too.

[sea nmf]

If this thread helps even those that read it change their habits, I guess it's worth it. It may not make a huge impact, but it doesn't add to it.

I also pick up all the plastic and misc garbage when I snorkel in front of my building. Once I was "fighting" an octopus for a piece of fiberglass. I let him win. :-)

[bluebubble1995]

The GreenPeace conjured Pacific Trash Vortex debunked here:
The Sargasso Sea and the Pacific Garbage Patch

The "plastic takes 500 years to decompose" myth is also debunked.

FYI...In no way to I condone littering on God's earth.

:mooner:

[klavdivs]

A real problem made to sound like a false problem due to exaggeration by the misguided desperate to get attention for the real problem... Arrgh!

[scubadrewvideo]

The GreenPeace conjured Pacific Trash Vortex debunked here:
The Sargasso Sea and the Pacific Garbage Patch

The "plastic takes 500 years to decompose" myth is also debunked.

FYI...In no way to I condone littering on God's earth.

:mooner:

SO this is the best you can come up with? 1 article from a source called "Skeptoid"?
Despite the name, I read this article in full, because I will read everything about this topic...good or bad.

I doubt you actually read this article because the point made at the end is simply the idea of "floating plastic islands" was untrue.

"The answer is simple: No such floating island of trash exists."

I could have told you that, if you had bothered to ask me what I saw when I was there in 2002.

I read nothing in the article to disprove the "500 yrs to decompose" All I found was...
"Most plastic floating in the open ocean degrades quite quickly, due primarily to ultraviolet radiation. It becomes brittle and crumbles. When it reaches microscopic size, it competes with phytoplankton as a food source for zooplankton, and enters the food chain."
If anything, it explains the ultimate danger of allowing this problem to continue.

The article also said that Hawaii was located in the center of the Gyre, and that is wrong as well. Hawaii lies along the southern edge of the "North Subtropical Gyre"

I also looked into the sources used for this article and what I found was quite revealing.
Quote * Skeptoid is a podcast, an audio production. Transcripts of the episodes are posted on this site afterwards. You can't really have footnotes in an audio production.
* If you are truly interested in a subject, you should research it for yourself. You shouldn't believe me or anyone else.
* Many "authoritative" sources, especially those found on the Internet, come from someone with a particular agenda. It's easy to find a reference to support any point you want to make, and this renders every footnote in the world suspect at face value.
* Filling in footnotes after the fact would simply take more time than I have available.

The author states, "I do a crapload of research for each project"

That should be rephrased to read "I do a load of crap research for each project"

I will give you credit bluebubble...you tried.
Now why don't you reveal your true identity so you can actually stand behind your opinion.

[bluebubble1995]

"The answer is simple: No such floating island of trash exists."

I could have told you that, if you had bothered to ask me what I saw when I was there in 2002.

Well looky there...we agree. Withholding the truth and allowing others to possibly buy the floating island myth doesn't make you look very forthright though. Can we also agree that GreenPeace exaggerates claims and is not a viable source of information?

[Shaka Doug]

I don't know of anyone who is calling the Pacific Tarsh Vortex a floating island of trash. It hasn't gotten that bad yet! It is the slow, concentric concentration of floating, degrading plastic garbage that is a huge problem. When fish (and other marine life for that matter) eat the micro plastic particles and die before reaching reproductive age, the fish population is at stake. Since our ecosytems require a balance we are putting them at risk due to a relatively foreign substance called plastic. Look at the birds and fish that are recovered or found with bellies full of this crap. What does that tell you? It doesn't take a marine science degree to realize this is a potentially disatrous situation for our future...and it's all man made!!!

[deco_martini]

This is always going to raise debate, but it is the direct result of untaxed, unregulated, free market capitalism.

Don't even go there. Capitalism didn't drain the Aral Sea (probably the greatest ecological disaster of the 20th century). The problem is improper waste disposal (including human littering). 20 percent of waste in the gyre is from ships. Some of it comes from Asia as well.

Also, think about this. Plastic is the buoyant non-biodegradable part of trash. So how much other crap that sinks or degrades is getting dumped? You see plastic bags in the gyre and think "wow, these BAGS are teh evil, viva Che!". However, you are seeing the tip of the iceberg. I am all for re-usable grocery bags, and if we ban the cheap plastic ones then we feel like we've done something. However, plastic shampoo bottles dumped from cruise ships and all other plastic waste that somehow isn't winding up in the landfill where it belongs will still be going into the ocean.

Its a "treat the symptom" mentality.

[rgbmatt]

There shouldn't be any disputing that the trash vortex exists - it's been well documented for decades. Probably the best example (locally) are the Japanese glass fishing floats that people used to find on the beach. Even though they stopped being made around WWII, they still could be found now and then up until the 1990s, which means that they'd been floating in the ocean undisturbed for at least 50 years. Back then, this was probably the only type of long-lasting floating object to get lost at sea.

You can't blame this problem on capitalism, lack of recycling, container ships, or whatever else. The nature of plastic itself is the real problem - it's a widespread substance that floats well and doesn't degrade quickly. Any sort of material like that is bound to end up in the ocean one way or another and once it's stuck in the gyre it's never going to go anywhere.

The only way to really stop the trash vortex problem IMO is for everybody to stop using plastic altogether. And how many of use plastic? We all do, of course. Surely Greenpeace contributes to the trash vortex just as much as the rest of us.

Not to say that it shouldn't be brought to people's attention, of course.

[Anthony Appleyard]

... I read nothing in the article to disprove the "500 yrs to decompose" All I found was...
"Most plastic floating in the open ocean degrades quite quickly, due primarily to ultraviolet radiation. It becomes brittle and crumbles. When it reaches microscopic size, it competes with phytoplankton as a food source for zooplankton, and enters the food chain."
If anything, it explains the ultimate danger of allowing this problem to continue. ...

Likely the speed of decomposition depends on:
(1) What sort of plastic each piece is.
(2) Whether a microorganism evolves that can break down this or that sort of plastic.