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

[Peter_C]

Still in my signature line! I try to do my good deed of the day every day and usually that means picking up plastic trash. Cleaned up a bunch of garbage at our State Park of the redwoods last weekend.

 

[lsorenson]

It is truly sad what we have done to ourselves... People; just think... how much better off this world would have been if God had "rested" just a split moment before Adam and Eve!

No disrespect intended, just more of a philosophical point of view...

lee

 

[drbill]

It could be a whole lot better if human beings really understood their connectedness to the real world (and I'm not talking about either Main Street or Wall Street) and respected that.

 

[lsorenson]

It could be a whole lot better if human beings really understood their connectedness to the real world (and I'm not talking about either Main Street or Wall Street) and respected that.

But see... They don't!!! Unless its in their backyard, they wont care because its something many wont rationalize or just don't care about... The biggest problem is that there are far more that wont care than do care and it becomes insurmountable... Much like someone mentioned earlier "pushing a string"...

I was working in Israel for a while and I was speaking to one of the locals I was working with... (I was trying to put into perspective why the Israelis and Palestinians can not find a way to coexist...) I asked him "If it took giving up some land to ensure peace would you do it?" He said "Sure!" I asked "How about if that land included some houses, would you then?" Again, he said "Sure!" Then I asked "What if one of those houses belonged to you...?" He then said; "No chance in hell!!!"

Unfortunately, most people don't mind or don't care unless it directly influences their life, much like oil, catastrophic oil disasters happening all over the world without anybody paying much attention to it or doing anything about it... BUT, let gas hit 4.00 again and then we will all talk about how we must get away from our oil dependencies... Then it drops below 3.00 and go back to our old habits...! Middle East (and countries we depend on) must chuckle each time we talk about changing, they pull the string, oil drops, and back we go to the old ways...

I remember people wanting to boycott Baseballs Opening Day... I said they were crazy trying for opening day... They wanted to do it during the playoffs or building up to the playoffs; again, never will happen... I said, "Pick some arbitrary day in June and make it a Tuesday, should be pretty easier to accomplish but it will never happen...

People just care about themselves for the most part... and in reality; that's really the saddest part to all of this!!!

We (me and my wife) try and do our little part by being the divers when volunteers are asked to help with that "Lets clean up the lake drive" that happens once a year, my wife also drives a Prius and has been for the past 6 years... but we are still part of the problem cause I do not recycle as well as I should and I have a Diesel truck to pull the RV with... Those plastic bags we gather from the Grocery store, we use to pick up after our dogs (we have 3) and those bags go into the trash and although it takes forever to degrade at least were picking up. Do you know the type of trouble we would get into if we were walking our dogs down the beach leaving their little presents here and there???

This "Island of Trash" in all fairness is something I was unaware of...! I am thankful that someone has pointed it out... My personal habits are pretty good when it comes to littering, even back when I smoked, my wife would really ride me cause I would have filters in my pocket rather than tossing them on the ground... However, I will look for other ways that I can contribute...

lee

 

[ygthad]

WOW! I never heard about this before. Thanks for showing , very sad.

 

[scubadrewvideo]

Algalita Marine Research Foundation is continuing their tireless efforts to study and raise awareness of the problem of plastics in our oceans. Click on link to learn more about this serious problem and what is being done. Much of the footage used for this promo was what I shot on my 2009 voyage.
North Pacific Gyre Voyage

 

[MrWizard]

Oregon State University assistant professor Angelicque "Angel" White who participated in an expedition to gauge plastic debris and studied the literature, figures the size of a hypothetically "cohesive" plastic patch in the North Pacific Ocean is actually less than 1 percent the geographic size of Texas.

Link

 

[scubadrewvideo]

thats still about 270 sq miles of SOLID plastic if you put it all together...the part that really bugs me about this is the following:
That commonly quoted phrase is a gross misquote of the man that originally made the statement. Capt Charles more after returning from one of his earliest voyages, was asked how big the problem was and he said "The area of highest concentration of debris that we found according to our studies is an area about twice the size of texas"
All it took was the media sensationalism to turn that quote into "Its an island of plastic twice the size of texas" The rest is history....I really wish people would not glob onto the terms used by reporters trying to boost the "oh my God" factor of their story.
The problem is real and serious and I hate seeing time and money wasted to debunk an already stupid misquote.

 

[uniqueloginname]

This offers some extra info: http://merosoch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pacific-garbage-patch1.jpg

I always understood plastic broke down with sunlight over time, but that suggests it does not - it just breaks into smaller and smaller bits of plastic. The molecule itself does not break down.

 

[VooDooGasMan]

We can't recycle cause why, The Rich can get Richer is the campaign I would go with. there has to be money in it. Ships can haul to recycle plants on the coast, every one get to make money.



Happy Diving