
The Ocean is Broken - samdunne
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/
======
3327
I saw some people comment on a thread similar to this yesterday called,
"Sailor says pacific is lifeless form Japan onwards for 3k Miles". I am
guessing it is the same gentleman in this article and this is the full
article. Some comments there were skeptical and suggested they had been at sea
and hadn't caught anything or had not "seen any whales or dolphins". Let me
say that there are countless counter arguments but try to view it from another
angle. Lets say you are a developer and you do that most of your life day in
and day out for years and years - just as this man sails the seas. After years
you will have certain observations that will be a culmination of your
experience and accumulated knowledge for doing that job for many years... And
perhaps young developers will not understand it or will question how you came
to such a conclusion, although it is evident to you and experienced peers like
yourself. You can't put it into a white paper because of several reason's like
time, money, and test conducting. This is like that, its experience and years
of wisdom that are talking. Maybe a state will fund a study which will cost 10
million bucks and 5 years to do statistical fish and trash sampling to confirm
it later on but without doing such things in the immediate term such a keen
observation has and should have the weight and impact it deserves, by that I
mean not being brushed off as there is not data and " I didn't see fish
either", its deeper than that and the approach should be constructing rather
than deconstructing.

~~~
ams6110
Even an entire human lifetime is an eyeblink in the ebb and flow of the ocean
environment. No matter what experience a person has, his own observations mean
nothing, or rather, are insufficient to assign any causality other than
natural variability. Most of the species that have ever lived in the oceans
(or anywhere else on the planet) are now extinct, and this happened long
before humans had any influence.

~~~
sousousou
I agree with you, but this statement has no ethical weight. We still get to
choose whether to do something, and if something, what.

------
cjensen
This is nonsense. A classic case of mistaking an anecdote for data.

There's lots of year-to-year variation in currents which affect life in the
ocean. In turn, the birds which depend on seafood vary tremendously.

For example, two years ago Pelagic Cormorants had tremendous problems with
their food source off of Northern California. So the Cormorants moved around
seeking food. Santa Clara County, which normally goes years without seeing
this species, saw dozens.

If you want to find out if something is actually going on, go talk to the
ornithologists who monitor the nesting sites for the seabirds.

~~~
SeanDav
or it may be the absolute truth - which you are dismissing as anecdotal.

In either case it is worth keeping an open mind, because if it is true, then
we are in serious trouble. Sticking your head in the sand and saying "no data,
no data" is not useful even if at the end of the day you are correct. When the
consequences of being right or wrong (depending on your point of view) are so
dire, it is worth investigating further and certainly not dismissing out of
hand.

~~~
atlanticus
I think it more interesting why some people want to believe such nonsense. The
price of fish is all the evidence you need. Glass half empty does not begin to
describe such a mind set.

~~~
mkingston
Fishing techniques have improved rapidly over the past few decades. The price
of fish is only a measure of supply in as much as we can continue extracting
fish. It's no indication of how close we are to running out.

------
scrumper
This was the most depressing bit for me:

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning
the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

I think that's a fairly neat example of a weakness of modern environmentalism:
an obsession with CO2 over everything else.

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D9u
The US, and other nations, have nuclear powered ships for war. Why not use
these ships for peace, and try cleaning the ocean?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre)

[http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/...](http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-
vortex/)

~~~
angersock
because nuclear

 _god_

its like you dont even understand clean energy

~~~
D9u
I actually _do_ understand clean energy, and these nuclear powered vessels to
which I refer have already been built and fitted. What better use for them
than to clean our oceans?

~~~
angersock
(Sarcasm, my good sir/madam.)

------
rurabe
It's really really sad, and no less ironic, that in the midst of this
government shutdown, particularly with the zealotry from the tea party about
the evils of government, that a problem which so obviously needs addressing,
and should naturally and probably only can be solved by governments, goes
unaddressed like this. Surely we must all be able to agree on this. What is
government for at all, if not to harness our collective will to solve problems
that economics deem impossible to solve by individuals?

~~~
logicchains
It's interesting to see the statement that a problem like this can 'probably
only be solved by governments' when governments so far have completely failed
to solve it, and the proposed non-government solutions (such as removing the
limitations on the liability of polluters, and allowing those whose health or
livelihood has been injured by pollution to sue, potentially by class action)
have never even been attempted. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and
over and inspecting a different result." After a few large polluters went
bankrupt after multi-billion dollar payouts to fishermen, beachgoers and such,
I imagine industry as a whole would be more wary about pollution. Without
limited liability - limited by government, I should add - BP would almost
certainly be bankrupt by now. As would whichever company owned the nuclear
plant that leaked in Japan.

~~~
rquantz
_the proposed non-government solutions (such as removing the limitations on
the liability of polluters, and allowing those whose health or livelihood has
been injured by pollution to sue, potentially by class action) have never even
been attempted._

The mistake you're making here is to think that this is a non-governmental
solution. Yes, it is law that is preventing this solution from being enacted,
but it is in the context of government that it could happen at all: government
runs the courts and forces the loser of a suit to pay the winner.

Your argument is akin to the people who shout "keep your government hands off
my medicare," or the politicians who insist that government can't do anything
right, and to prove it they get into office and do everything wrong.

Yes, government in America is broken and ineffectual. It will only be fixed
when we as a people decide that it's time for a government that responds to
the needs of the people rather than only the wealthy; when we decide to stop
being afraid and end the police state we're living in, and replace it with a
government that works. Yes every government has its problems, but not all of
them are as broken and destructive as ours. Saying government can't solve
problems is _part of the problem_ \-- it keeps us from focusing our efforts on
the kind of collective action that could actually make a difference.

What say you, brothers? Who is with me?

[crickets]

------
Keyframe
This is extremely unsettling and sad. The question is, is there anything we
can do both on micro and macro level?

~~~
rurabe
I would guess on a micro level the best thing you can do is recycle, reducing
the amount of refuse that ends up in landfills and often times out at sea. A
lot of it from coastal areas ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and
it's not like storing it on land is awesome either.

The problem really is that even decently sized macro action can be largely
negated by economic freeriders. Unless some body like the UN or US sets out to
enforce universal cooperation with agreements on pollution, or fishing, whole
states that don't follow the regulations will continue to take advantage.
Witness the failed Kyoto Protocol, which had 191/192 nations in agreement, but
the very worst polluters (read: the US) who refused to be party to it.

------
highace
Fortunately once we've sucked the earth dry of it's resources and die out
ourselves, it should eventually recover.

------
blahedo
Why oh why do interface designers ever think it's a good idea to hijack the
browser's keyboard controls, especially if it's only to make them do
_nothing_?

------
ColinWright
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579760)

~~~
samdunne
Noticed right after I posted. Gave it an upvote

~~~
ColinWright
Cool. Suggest we delete the submission and this discussion, although if you
don't, it doesn't matter. I'm just a bit obsessive about tidiness. Born from
working on the C2 wiki, I guess.

 _Edit: Although I see now that this submission has a few upvotes, so maybe we
'd better not delete it. <shrug>_

~~~
samdunne
Glad I didn't

------
grok2
It would have been great confirmation of all that he writes about to see some
photos from his trip -- specially of the infamous garbage patch.

~~~
jws
You can't photograph the garbage patch in any meaningful way. It isn't
visible. There are more fine plastic particles per cubic meter of water and
you are more likely than normal to happen a cross a bit of floating plastic,
but a picture doesn't tell the story.

If you have seen pictures of solid garbage on the water, you are probably
looking at a large bay in a metropolitan area, say Manila.

~~~
kalleboo
You're correct about the garbage patch that's typically talked about in the
news, but this article mentions:

> "In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the
> propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of
> situation, out in the ocean.

> "On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the
> depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the
> way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of
> a big car or truck.

> "We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of
> boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type
> thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

> "We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through
> a garbage tip.

~~~
Zancarius
I believe the article is talking about ephemeral debris that was sent into the
ocean from the 2011 tsunami. What will happen to it in the next 10-20 years is
anyone's guess, but factory chimneys aren't something that get thrown
overboard or stuffed into municipal landfills.

What this does demonstrate is how one natural disaster can spread signs of
human influence and decay for thousands of miles, and it will likely take
decades for this stuff to degrade or disperse.

------
dicroce
The good news is that apparently the Japanese aren't having sex anymore, so
maybe the ocean around Japan will soon get a bit of a break:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579294)

------
vijayr
_It was like sailing through a garbage tip_

:(

As an individual, what are the things we could do (other than using less
plastic), so we don't contribute to this mess?

------
halfcat
The ocean is broken? Sounds like aliens to me...

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leokun
This comment is going to get downvoted for meta-ness and probably because
everyone disagrees with me but I just have to speak my mind: I'd like a
version of hacker news sans the constant hysteria all the time.

