
Fish are eating lots of plastic - petethomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-bad-news-is-that-fish-are-eating-lots-of-plastic-even-worse-they-may-like-it/2017/09/01/54159ee8-8cc6-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html
======
userbinator
I really wish plastics were recycled/reused a lot more, because they are such
ideal materials --- being rather unreactive, flexible, resilient, and (in the
case of thermoplastics, which make up the bulk of this waste) easily
reprocessed. Although the throwaway culture and low cost means that a lot of
it doesn't, I wonder if in the future, if the prices go up in following
petroleum trends, "mining" for plastics would start becoming profitable and
recycling increase significantly.

I also see some parallels with CFCs --- another substance with some great
properties, but which became so common and cheap that we started to use them
too carelessly and caused a lot of environmental damage in the process.
Hopefully, this time we'll collectively realise, and plastics won't get banned
like that.

~~~
Ninjalicious
I'm sort of banking on that. I expect our landfills will be mined by junkers.
There is a lot of rare earth elements, metals, and plastics that won't
biodegrade very quickly. Little snake bots tunneling through could pick them
all up. It's all a matter of need, we'll deplete the finite resources soon.

~~~
throwaway613834
> I'm sort of banking on that. I expect our landfills will be mined by
> junkers.

I'm sorry, but all you're doing in reality (whether you realize it or not) is
finding some vague resemblance of a justification for our irresponsible
culture. I would either try to do something to address the problem or just
avoid trying to keep up hopes like this. It only makes people feel better
about not helping without actually solving anything.

~~~
wiz21c
Yep that culture of "let's create more problems so we can sell more solutions"
is despicable...

------
acd
We buy lots of cheap plastic made of carbon oil co2 emissions. Then we throw
the plastic waste into the oceans. Plastic has weak estrogen hormone
disturbance in them from BPA. Then we humans eat the fish and thus gets the
estrogen from BPA. This is bound to have human reproduction issues down the
line.

[http://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors/plastic](http://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors/plastic)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A)

~~~
blitmap
Children of Men/Fish

------
dev_throw
Bioaccumulation is a serious thing. I suspect increase of plastic in fish
might be related to the reduction in sperm count in men.[0][1]

 _[0][https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-semen-
quality...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-semen-quality/) _

_[1][http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-
plasti...](http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-plastic-
debris-and-sex/) _

~~~
PerfectElement
Eating lower in the food chain is a practical and accessible solution.

~~~
HillaryBriss
yeah. that's certainly been the approach for reducing exposure to mercury.

but, with plastics, i wonder how significant the exposure reduction is for,
say, consuming sardines, given that _the plastic particles themselves_ may be
mistaken for plankton.

in other words, what percentage of a low food chain fish's or mollusk's diet
is _pure plastic?_

------
jxramos
I wish they would have provide a quantitative measure of something about how
much fish and how much plastic has been found to have been eaten by marine
life. Maybe it's in the link they give to "enormous quantities of plastic
trash", but it would be nice to have a scale to the problem.

~~~
acdanger
Here is some research:
[https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/bitstreams/11700/retrieve](https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/bitstreams/11700/retrieve)

Page 93 has some specifics on recorded incidence of plastic ingestion among
certain species.

------
spodek
Hardly a word about reducing production and consumption.

There's no mystery where the plastic is coming from -- us. We can live without
it, certainly with a lot less of it.

While we wait for legislation, at least on a personal level we can take
responsibility for our externalities and reduce our personal consumption.

------
jwilk
The submission title makes the article appear less exciting than it actually
is.

It's not news that fish are eating plastics. The news is that now we know they
do it because apparently plastics smells good.

Can we add "Even worse, they may like it" to the submission title?

------
andy_ppp
How much plastic in fish flesh compared to say leaching into a bottle of water
or dust from plastic clothing? Which fish are worst, where is tuna on this
list? By what mechanism is fish liver function effected and will this
translate to humans?

It goes without saying we should avoid dumping plastic in the sea, but we have
no information how harmful fish twice per week is really.

------
amigoingtodie
I recently began bodybuilding and have been relying on canned tuna for
protein. I eat other sources, but eat at least 1 to 2 cans daily.

Is the plastic worse than the mercury?

What would be a healthy, affordable, and easy to prepare (this is very
important) alternative?

Also, is canned tuna a US thing? How often do you consume canned tuna?

~~~
tomkinstinch
Consider the humble sardine: rich in protein, omega-3s, and (with bones)
calcium. They're much lower in the food chain than tuna, so there's less
bioaccumulation of mercury, etc. And they taste good. I like the ones in
harissa (pepper) paste.

[http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+can+sardines](http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+can+sardines)

------
somberi
Two relevant articles - one about the amount of plastic in the Ocean, and the
other about plastic-eating caterpillars (seems like they don't eat that much
to be of use).

1-
[https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/05/daily-...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/05/daily-
chart-6)

2- [https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/217213...](https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21721328-escape-shopping-bag-triggers-idea-plastic-eating-
caterpillars-could)

------
iNerdier
The irony of the first ad I'm shown being a coffee machine with unrecyclable
pods to fill it makes me both amused and sad. Sort of sums up the whole
problem really.

~~~
jbg_
If it's Nespresso (or a compatible system) that you were shown an ad for, the
"unrecyclable" line that seems to often get repeated is actually false.

The pods _are_ recyclable, but whether they actually _get_ recycled is a
legitimate concern. In Switzerland and Germany, currently about 50% of used
pods are recycled, and this is growing rapidly.

Additionally, Nestle claims that the proportion of recycled aluminium (from
all sources, not just used pods) in all manufactured pods now approaches 80%.

~~~
oh_sigh
Approaching 80% of recycled aluminum is great, but remember that aluminum
recycling rates in general are very good (~70%)

------
clebio
> This article was originally published on
> [theconversation.com.]([https://theconversation.com/bait-and-switch-
> anchovies-eat-pl...](https://theconversation.com/bait-and-switch-anchovies-
> eat-plastic-because-it-smells-like-prey-81607))

------
pvaldes
With only the info available in the article, It seems that there are some
serious flaws with the design of this study. I didn't read the original
article and I could be wrong but at this moment is not conclusive to me.

~~~
pvaldes
Ok, I found the link to the study. This is one of the things that I was
looking for:

 _these behavioural responses were absent in clean plastic and control
treatments_.

Much better then. Some questions remaining still.

Anchovies are preys. Is aggregation a signal of food or are they just afraid
of a strange odour?.

------
sml156
What's wrong with fish these days, They didn't do that when I was a kid.

~~~
saagarjha
That's because there wasn't as much plastic in the water for them to consume.

------
carapace
I have a plan, but it's taking me a bit longer than I'd hoped:
[http://phoenixbureau.github.io/ReGPGP/](http://phoenixbureau.github.io/ReGPGP/)

> The only way to clean up such a huge mess is to create a system that mimics
> the way life would do it. Really, if something could eat plastic there
> wouldn't be quite such a bad problem. It is because no living creature can
> digest plastic that it stays around and accumulates. So the solution is to
> create a kind of artificial life that can eat the plastic. Robots that
> replicate themselves, with a little bit of manual assistance, and collect
> and convert the trash into forms that can be used by living creatures.

A little help?

~~~
bsder
That's called a bacterium.

Why not create an actual bacterium to break plastic down like everything else
in the environment? It's not really that hard--high school students have done
it before.

[http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-plastic-
eati...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-plastic-eating-
bacteria-20161116-story.html)

Bonus points if you can make the bacterium specific to particular kinds of
plastic.

~~~
avodonosov
Yes.

One possible problem: if the bacteria also eat plastic in our useful devices,
not yet garbadge.

~~~
bsder
You do realize that "plastic" encompasses a _lot_ of very chemically different
compounds?

Breaking down a "plastic" is going to be a very specific thing because it
takes a _LOT_ of energy to do so (plastics are really stable--that's why we
use them).

In addition, if it's so evolutionarily advantageous to eat plastic, something
would have evolved already. It's really not--plastic is very stable, and
doesn't really give you anything useful when you break it down.

So, even if you created a plastic-eating grey goo, it will evolve to eat
something that takes less energy very quickly.

~~~
avodonosov
Hm, interesting, thanks.

In this case we feed them in reward for collecting plastic. As flowers feed
bees for spreading their pollen.

------
Aron
Just proves how dumb they are. Plastic doesn't have any calories or hedonistic
value at all really.

------
pvaldes
And also cetaceans, sea-birds and turtles.

~~~
fairpx
I was watching a documentary, that proposed Humans do as well, since we end up
consuming some of the fish that eat that stuff.

~~~
shellbackground
That's exactly what article is talking about.

------
harryf
Prediction: evolution will solve what humans are incapable of. That means
species of fish evolving that specializes in eating plastic. Kinda makes
sense. While plastic isn't bio-degradeable in the normal sense, perhaps the
digestive system of a specialized fish will succeed. After all there is an
abundance.

~~~
lobster_johnson
The evolutionary pressure to cause a mutated, plastic-eating fish to
outcompete non-plastic-eating fish would suggest that there would be areas
where plastic was more abundant that the other things (plankton, mostly) that
fish normally feed on, i.e. other fish would be at a disadvantage because they
couldn't process plastic. That's a pretty dire scenario for humans.

~~~
pm90
Not necessarily. A lot of the flora and fauna in the New World developed
somewhat independently from that in the old one. So we might have these new
species evolve in regions of the oceans where the plastic is more abundant.

------
guskel
Maybe toxic fish could curb overfishing.

~~~
QAPereo
I've never felt better about having a lifelong dislike of fish.

------
turk183
Let's be honest about the plastic in the oceans: It is not first world
countries causing most of the problem. Ships do drop their trash in the ocean,
that needs to stop, and we're all guilty to some degree, but if you want to
stop the worst of the pollution you have to go to the Far East, Latin America,
and Africa.

~~~
blunte
Actually that's not correct. The first world consumer society demands and
consumes a lot of products - products made with plastic, packed in plastic,
handed out in plastic bags, bottled in plastic, etc.

We buy, then toss (trash bin, recycle bin, or on the ground) the packaging and
even old/broken bits we no longer need.

Certainly the developing world needs some education and behavior changes to
limit their impact, but we have much responsibility ourselves.

And our trash/recycling is often shipped to their lands - then stored, dumped,
or otherwise "recycled" poorly. Weather events or just poor planning allow
some of that waste to end up in water systems.

