Sigh. If this goes on, there’s probably nothing much we’ve left of Mother Earth to give the younger generation. Something must be done about this…

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When oil hits $200 a barrel nations will be fighting each other to harvest all that plastic. Using converted bottom trawlers.

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I think between 1 and 2 there would have to be ‘why this is a problem’ (for humans??), unfortunately a problem just for animals obviously doesn’t resonate as much as for one humans, although there has been a fair bit of progress on protecting gulls/albatrosses from fishing boat long-line hooks.

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For some weird reason that escapes me, it seems that MONEY is the only thing many humans take seriously.

Let us work out a strategy collectively:

For starters, here are some ideas (“off the top of my head”!)

1. Collate the evidence.

2. Work out the financial cost (as accurately as possible) of gathering, cleaning up and recycling the various messes.

3. Work out the contribution to the mess made by each country: (population, lifestyle, manufacture, disposal/recycling habits etc etc.)

4. Through international bodies (UN for starters?) work out the cost per person/country (corrected for the amount of plastic each country uses) and add this cost to every bit of plastic made.

etc

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Steve Connor: Why plastic is the scourge of sea life

Birds are not the only ones to suffer. Turtles, whales, seals and sea lions have all eaten plastic. But the most sinister problem may be a hidden one at the other end of the food chain.

Small sand-hoppers, barnacles and lugworms have also been found to have ingested tiny fragments of plastic, some of which are thinner than a human hair. Apart from the physical damage these particles cause, they may also transfer toxic chemicals to creatures at the base of the marine food web.

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Utterly gross.

Would be great to be able to believe an enthusiastic World body, (UN?) might lead the way on a) cleaning up the plastic sea, and b) assist in preventing it happen again.

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…like some fishing boats? That sure would take a long time though, and who would take it all? There’s the option of dumping, and possible recycling, but that would…take a long time, gosh.

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# toad Says:
February 11th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

>> …buy up some old fishing boats?

> Hopefully Japan may well soon have a fleet of redundant whaling vessels that could be used for the purpose

nah, they’re in such poor condition that they’re in danger of causing oil slicks and making the situation worse. And you can’t catch this rubbish with harpoons anyway.

What you need is a couple of drift net fishing boats to pull a net 5 km long and collect the rubbish that way. Obviously the nets should not hang down as low as drift net fishing nets, because that would take all the fish out of the water at the same time.

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…buy up some old fishing boats?

Hopefully Japan may well soon have a fleet of redundant whaling vessels that could be used for the purpose

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Would certainly be expensive…how do we do it – buy up some old fishing boats? yuk

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That’s the size of the gyre, not the floating rubbish entity, which is very difficult to estimate. Pedantic, I know.

Either way, it isn’t good and should be cleared up.

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The rubbish in the picture seems to be twice the size of the USA, not just Texas.

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Bluepeter said: Estimated at twice the size of Texas, not the continental US.

For many Texans, and one former Governer in particular, there is no difference!

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Estimated at twice the size of Texas, not the continental US.

Still large of course.

The government want to clean it up….

“Bamford said she has noted some “gaps in the research” that suggest the affected area is not as large as Moore estimates (Moor estimates twice the size of Texas). Yet there’s no question that marine debris is gathering in the area and is having a negative impact on marine life, such as fish who mistake the particles for food.

“But before we embark on a huge removal process,” Bamford said, “we need to understand what we’re dealing with.”

Bamford added that the agency had attempted to take satellite photos of the area last year, but the overhead photos were inconclusive. “It’s hard to distinguish a whale reaching the surface versus a piece of plastic,” she said.”

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Saw a film on this at the Environment Film Festival in New Plymouth in 2006. If someone know of this film perhaps we can get it dusted off and shown again?

Scott

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Yes… and it’s not just the Pacific…. It is pretty astonishing to be seeing cr@p floating past the ship 1000 nm from any land. I think that that was when I first really became an “environmentalist” rather than simply a worrier about population and resources.

I first saw that 32 years ago.

respectfully
BJ

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“the impact of this on the environment’s health” is something along the lines of: sun breaks down plastic, animals eat plastic, we eat those animals. Would imagine some of the animals are eating the plastic and dying before we get them too.

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Makes one proud to be Human doesn’t it!

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Ewww Gross. One interesting thing I found when I was living in Korea was how much more recycling is part of everyday life.

For instance when you go to most fast food joints, you seperate out your food scraps and paper scraps and cups. Also there is a packaging tax on bags. Though nominal, it was not unusal to see people reusing the bags (though it is becoming a more common occurence here) .

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