Can Flotsam and Netting Help Clean Our Oceans?

[Loren Booda]

What about using these twenty mile long fish nets for scooping up the burgeoning trash in the oceans, instead of depleting sea life?

 

[member 5645]

you can't eat trash

 

[Robert Zaleski]

you can't eat trash

Some environmentalist groups think we should.

 

[Loren Booda]

phatmonky

you can't eat trash

Yes, but trash may eventually consume you.

 

[member 5645]

phatmonky Yes, but trash may eventually consume you.

ohhhh, I see what you did right there!

Your original post said INSTEAD of depleting sea life. News to you, we are going to keep eating sea life. So the depletion will continue.

Perhaps an alternative garbage collections system. I don't see how your theoretical nets will suddenly stop grabbing animals and start focusing on trash.

 

[jimmy p]

There will always be fish caught, but (it's a LOOOOOOOOOONG shot) you could study fish populations in areas of the sea and when they are lowest in an area, start trawlin' for trash.

 

[russ_watters]

What about using these twenty mile long fish nets for scooping up the burgeoning trash in the oceans, instead of depleting sea life?

This post makes me wonder if you've ever seen the ocean.

 

[amp]

A lot of trash lies along the coastlines fouling up beaches and oceanliners dump their refuse into the ocean, as large as the oceans are you hardly see it but the fact that its seen means the trash is accumulating.

 

[Loren Booda]

phatmonky

I don't see how your theoretical nets will suddenly stop grabbing animals and start focusing on trash.

russ_watters

This post makes me wonder if you've ever seen the ocean.

Fact One: such nets have managed to deplete the oceans of over half of many fish species, so why not put them to use collecting flotsam, avoiding most sea life (by the radar currently used to locate them for consumption) as jimmy p suggests.

Fact Two: The Pacific Ocean contains a "sargasso sea" with many thousands of square miles coalescing more and more of the manufacturing end products from South East Asia.

 

[russ_watters]

Fact One: such nets have managed to deplete the oceans of over half of many fish species, so why not put them to use collecting flotsam, avoiding most sea life (by the radar currently used to locate them for consumption) as jimmy p suggests.

The first part may be a fact but that doesn't make the second part realistic. A fishing boat trawling for trash would net about a soda can a day. Again, it appears to me you've never seen the ocean.

Fact Two: The Pacific Ocean contains a "sargasso sea" with many thousands of square miles coalescing more and more of the manufacturing end products from South East Asia.

No, actually, the sargasso sea is in the Atlantic ocean, and again, even in there, you'd net about a coke can a day. On my one translantic deployment, though, we did find an abandoned lifeboat in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. I have some good pics of us shooting it to bits...

Also, it would seem you guys are unaware of the regulations on ocean dumping. You can't just dump indiscriminately. You can't ever dump plastic, for example. See the graphic in the middle of the page: http://www.boat-ed.com/or/course/p4-13_wastedischarge.htm

 

[Loren Booda]

russ,

In the past year I heard on the news that megatons of solid waste - in large part plastic - from South East Asia have been dumped into the Pacific Ocean. I believe there are areas of the ocean where it will become critical to skim for this trash.

My reference to a "sargasso sea" was just that - not the actual Sargasso Sea, but an analogy to it in the Pacific. Call the region "the doldrums" if you like. This is an area which concentrates flotsam but has, I believe, a dearth of fish and is optimum for netting these debris. (Plant life might interfere with such an operation, though it might be harvested as renewable biomass for fuel.)

Do you think that the Chinese, or any other nearby developing countries are concerned as we about American dumping regulations, which extend a relatively small distance into the Pacific?

You throw out the hypothetical "soda can" catch as a red herring, or at best a gross miscalculation misrepresenting these and previous facts I have stated. I grew up around oceanography - my dad was editor of Sea Technology magazine and introduced me to his friends Andy Rechnitzer and Don Walsh, my brother works for NAVOCEANO and a cousin outfits ships for Bob Ballard.

I don't wish to insult you, but your responses to my topic seem to me preconceived, disinterested and sarcastic.

 

[amp]

I have to agree with LBooda I watched a program 'Nature' or 'The Blue Planet' and it showed some of the difficulty ocean life is having with 'Trash'. One memorable scene was of a sea turtle trying to eat a plastic container, the narrator remarked on how it may resemble a jellyfish to the turtle.

 

[member 5645]

I have to agree with LBooda I watched a program 'Nature' or 'The Blue Planet' and it showed some of the difficulty ocean life is having with 'Trash'. One memorable scene was of a sea turtle trying to eat a plastic container, the narrator remarked on how it may resemble a jellyfish to the turtle.

I don't think anyone is saying that we should curb pollution. The question is "can nets do anything?"

 

[amp]

Yes, nets probably could scoop up a lot on refuse that floats and if care is taken with little adverse effects on sea-life.

 

[member 5645]

Yes, nets probably could scoop up a lot on refuse that floats and if care is taken with little adverse effects on sea-life.

So I've been told, but can anyone show me anything explaining the plan in detail? How much will it cost? How much trash will it pickup? What is the benefit over other proposed fixes? Who will do this?

Pardon me if I seem skeptical, I simply am reading generalized statements that sound good, but with no backing or detail

 

[amp]

Phat, I don't think the legislation has been drawn up yet.

 

[member 5645]

Phat, I don't think the legislation has been drawn up yet.

Well, if that's all there is to this argument, I think we should just train dolphins to clean it up for us! They obviously can find hte trash easier since they keep trying to eat it

 

[amp]

Dolphins Turtles same animal. Nope. Dolphins are brighter and eat fish.

 

[member 5645]

Dolphins Turtles same animal. Nope. Dolphins are brighter and eat fish.

I wasn't making my statement based on anything in this thread. I simply realized that dolphins would be the easiest to train to find our trash. Then we can go scoop it up!

This is already better than the net idea.

 

[Loren Booda]

If we wait long enough, the problem will need addressing by some means. Nets are proven technology for sieving objects from the sea.

The number of floating plastic pellets found in the Sargasso Sea has been measured in excess of 3,500 parts per square kilometer.

http://www.seashepherd.org/essays/ocean_realm_aut01.html

Plastics are the most common man-made objects sighted at sea.

http://www.amcs.org.au/learn/fact_sheets/facts_marine_debris.html

Around 24,000 metric tons of plastic packaging ends up in the Atlantic Ocean every year.

http://www.buei.bm/pages/oceannotions.html

In per capita terms, the annual fish catch per person peaked at 17 kilograms in 1988

www.naturalist.com/eco-news/ index.cfm?p=display&id=7452 - 32k[/URL]

A rough calculation yields 1,000,000 metric tons accumulated since plastics have been produced, compared to 100,000,000 metric tons of fish caught annually, with an estimated average age of one year. A factor of ten may be introduced to the amount of plastics if one considers their lifetime - 500 years. Eventually we could net one pound of plastic to every ten pounds of fish - much more in the natural catch basin of the doldrums.

 

[russ_watters]

I only looked at one, but I saw this:

Eighteen billion of those disposable diapers end up in the oceans each year; Americans alone toss 2.5 million plastic bottles into the sea every hour.

Um, sure - does the US even use 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour?

Plastics are the most common man-made objects sighted at sea.

An empty assertion. What else is there to see? Ships? On my ocean crossing, we didn't cross in a shipping lane and we saw maybe 5 ships the entire 2 weeks it took to cross the Atlantic.

Sorry, LB, but I agree with phat, but I'll take it a step further - someone needs to go charter a fishing boat and see what they can catch before I'll buy this.

 

[amp]

Um, sure - does the US even use 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour?

Probably, there are approx. 300 million US citizens, say about 10% drink a beverage from a plastic container, would that do? (How many bottles of Coke and Pepsi sold in just the US?)

 

[Loren Booda]

Which would you rather see most often on an ocean voyage - sea weed, natural flotsam or plastic?

Americans alone toss 2.5 million plastic bottles into the sea every hour.

"Every day" sounds more reasonable. I think the sticking point is not so much the actual amount but the size of the plastic - those ubiquitous plastic pellets would be hard to catch in a net.

 

[russ_watters]

Which would you rather see most often on an ocean voyage - sea weed, natural flotsam or plastic?

That's not what the quote said, LB - it didn't mention natural floatsam at all. That's why it was a pointless statement.