
Great Pacific garbage patch: giant plastic trap put to sea again - saravana85
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-pacific-garbage-patch-floating-plastic-trap-deployed-again
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jacobwilliamroy
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.

~~~
hanniabu
600 tons of netting a year is just mind boggling, I can't imagine how many
animals are getting tangled in that

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
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.

~~~
Joakal
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.

~~~
pvaldes
> Is it heavy enough to sink nets?

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

~~~
leksak
> b) Another partial solution could be to build shredder ships

Shredding the nets? Wouldn't this just make it a microplastics issue?

~~~
pvaldes
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).

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te_chris
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.

~~~
bubblewrap
If it fails, it is a waste of money and resources. What about that would we
"need"?

Also, if it works, why not dump more plastic into the sea. After all,
apparently we can simply fish it out again.

~~~
baq
false dichotomy

~~~
bubblewrap
How so?

~~~
Robotbeat
Because we are not resource-constrained, we are attention-constrained. More
efforts like this beget more (& better) efforts.

~~~
bubblewrap
We are not resource-constrained? What on earth makes you think so? It is
genuinely news to me. Has fusion power been discovered?

And even if we were only attention constrained, a project that doesn't work
would draw attention away from more promising ideas.

~~~
Robotbeat
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.

~~~
bubblewrap
Wasn't there a reason why we shouldn't burn that much oil anymore? I can't
quite name it, but it is all over the news lately.

In comparison, plastic is actually mostly just an aesthetic issue.

~~~
lm28469
> plastic is actually mostly just an aesthetic issue.

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+endocrine+disruptors&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart)

[https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=microplastic+effect+on+h...](https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=microplastic+effect+on+health&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart)

~~~
bubblewrap
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.

------
JoeAltmaier
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.

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andrewstuart
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.

A quixotic fools errand.

~~~
chinathrow
I disagree. It's one of many steps we need to do right now and in the future:

\- 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?

~~~
andrewstuart
> 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?

~~~
dade_
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.

~~~
chinathrow
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.

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ncmncm
Just last night I was wondering what happened to this project. Happy to see
it's still going!

They should disperse iron oxide dust downstream while they're at it.

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marmadukester39
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.

~~~
orev
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.

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Tepix
I'm glad to see them working on this. We also need a solution for the
microplastics that are at the bottom of the oceans.

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dangerface
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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ourmandave
To raise awareness they should reshoot the rescue scene from _Castaway_ with
Tom Hanks.

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.

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pedalpete
I wish there were some details as to what was changed in the design. If it was
just a repair, what is the likelihood of the beam breaking again.

~~~
apricote
You can read more about the design changes in their related blog post:
[https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-design-
upgrades-c...](https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-design-upgrades-
completed-to-be-relaunched-in-june/)

------
quicklime
Working link: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-
pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-pacific-
garbage-patch-floating-plastic-trap-deployed-again)

~~~
dang
Fixed now. Thanks!

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tmalsburg2
I'm getting 404 page not found. Please fix the link.

~~~
rcar1046
Hand held.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=garbage+patch+trap+guardian](https://www.google.com/search?q=garbage+patch+trap+guardian)

~~~
tmalsburg2
Guess what, I had figured it out myself. It's a good idea to fix the link
nonetheless.

