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> Ships have the advantage of being able to dump waste in the middle of the ocean where there is little to no life (too deep, no light, no plants. There is some life). Compared to what other, land based, industries do this is comparatively benign. Here the waste gets diluted by an essentially infinite sink.

There is life everywhere that there is a temperature gradient to exploit. Just because we haven't named it doesn't mean it isn't there. There's life in ices, life at the top of mountains, life in the deep ocean, and life in the shallow places. So I would prefer to err on the side of caution.

By the way, the same arguments you're making for dumping sulfurous water were also made for the introduction of PEG into our toothpastes, shampoos, body wash, lotions, and various other cleaners. It was only after the same plastics were discovered at all levels of our food chain that someone realized it was actually a bad idea to do this. So I'm skeptical of any argument for dumping based on the small quantity of dumped materials. Humans are really good at scaling up small actions into huge consequences. And now there's plastic microbeads in our oceans, lakes, streams, fish, birds, game animals--basically anything that eats anything has measurable quantities.




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