10 ms·
Plastic Micro-Particle Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific
- xd1936 9y agoIt always blows my mind that we can still "discover" something as large as Mexico on our planet that nobody previously knew about.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoBecause it's not really something as big as Mexico. As stated in the article, these "plastic patches" aren't a big visible dump of plastic in the ocean. If you seem through it, you wouldn't know it was different from the rest of the ocean. It's basically a large area of the ocean with a significant concentration of microscopic plastic higher than the rest of the ocean.
- iainmerrick 9y agoWell, it may not be very dense, but... It's still big, right?
- dogma1138 9y agoYes but it's not like you would notice it unless you filter the water. It's bad but if you would be sailing through that patch you wouldn't notice a damn thing. If you are a fish on the other hand you would probably not like it very much.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Retric 9y agoYou will find plenty of pieces that are several inches wide, along with large numbers in the cm size range. https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/garbage-island/563b9c912aab5c416bc75039 https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/garbage-island/563b9c912a... Further, it's not about people. Fish gills for example are designed to filter a lot of water so fish do encounter a lot of plastic.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoThe video you posted is over an hour long. Is there a timestamp with the content relevant to having large pieces of plastic?
- Retric 9y agoWatch the first five minutes ish.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jsnk 9y agoI wish stories like this had some photos.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoIf it had photos, it would look just like the rest of the ocean.
- tyingq 9y agoFrom the story: "The pieces of plastic are not necessarily floating bottles, bags, and buoys, but teeny-tiny pieces of plastic resembling confetti...These microplastic particles may not be visible floating on the surface, but in this case, they were detected after collecting water samples..." So, photos probably wouldn't help much.
- floatingatoll 9y agoA density graph of the Pacific Ocean showing plastic particulate count measured at various points, with the gaps filled in using gradients, would be stellar here.
- mtl_usr 9y agoBut the article would lose all clickbaitiness. Not good when the website that hosts it relied on page view and ads to make a profit ! EDIT : National geographic isn't an offender for clickbait.
- DanBC 9y agoThere's nothing to see. The plastic tends to be very small. This is partly because of the source (acrylic fibres from clothing; microbreads from cosmetics) and because the UV in sunlight, and the waves, break up larger bits of plastic. For the other patches: > 200,000 pieces per square kilometer in the North Atlantic garbage patch. > 4 particles per cubic meter in the Great Pacific garbage patch. This is more than the amount of food in some places, and it's a real problem and needs to be fixed. But it's not something you can see.
- deleted 9y ago
- robinj6 9y agoThis is a misleading title regularly used by the media. TLDR: This area has a higher concentration of micro-particles. It is not visible to the naked eye.
- iainmerrick 9y agoWhat would a less misleading headline be? "High concentration of plastic found in ocean area bigger than Mexico"? It seems like this is still a pretty significant phenomenon, even if it's not visible to the naked eye.
- Waterluvian 9y agoAgreed. But that doesn't justify making it sound like there's a Mexico garbage barge out there.
- nvahalik 9y ago"Mexico garbage barge" sounds like it be a great band name.
- mabramo 9y agoThis post is either meta or deja-vu... I swear someone commented this last week.
- EGreg 9y agoIs the methane in the atmosphere visible to the naked eye? Guess it's not significant.
- nsxwolf 9y agoIf the average reader imagines a dense raft of plastic bags and water bottles the size of Mexico, it's a bad headline. I don't consider myself stupid, yet that's exactly what I imagined when I read the headline.
- 9y ago
- joekrill 9y agoVICE has a good documentary on what this actually looks like: https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/garbage-island/563b9c912aab5c416bc75039 https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/garbage-island/563b9c912a...
- mi100hael 9y ago> This page is using an unminified build of React. > The React build on this page appears to be unminified. This makes its size larger, and causes React to run slower. ಠ_ಠ
- floatingatoll 9y agoThey ask that you report technical issues to @ViceTech on Twitter: https://www.vice.com/en_us/page/vice-about https://www.vice.com/en_us/page/vice-about
- robbyking 9y agoBefore I watched this I (like most people) assumed the Pacific Garbage Patch was a solid mass one could stand on. The fact that it's more like confetti makes the idea of cleaning it seem that much more difficult.
- _nickwhite 9y agoA quite good documentary has been made on the effects of plastics, and specifically micro plastics that proliferate the world's oceans. Called "A Plastic Ocean"- https://www.plasticoceans.org/a-plastic-ocean/ https://www.plasticoceans.org/a-plastic-ocean/ After seeing this, I now always think twice about single-use plastics like water bottles and grocery bags.
- funkymike 9y agoBoth water bottles and grocery bags are recyclable. While the grocery store I go to the most removed the grocery bag recycling bins they used to have, I believe they are still accepted at the Target stores around town, along with other types of recyclables. You may have easy options for recycling where you can drop stuff off as part of normal shopping trips.
- _nickwhite 9y agoWhere I live, the trash company is the same as the recycling company, so it's very likely the recycle (at least some portion of it) ends up in the trash. Better to just avoid the plastics, which is actually pretty impossible for some items.
- dawnerd 9y agoAlternately they presort everything like my old city did. Same trucks would pick up both cans.
- unkown-unknowns 9y ago> the trash company is the same as the recycling company, so it's very likely the recycle (at least some portion of it) ends up in the trash No that doesn't make sense. If they didn't care about recycling why would they make people sort their trash in the first place?
- kbart 9y ago"If they didn't care about recycling why would they make people sort their trash in the first place?" At least in EU, companies can get generous grants for recycling, but there's little oversight, so often "recycling" part is only on paper or small part of total waste. Few years ago there was scandal in Lithuania, because thrash companies put different containers for plastics, glass, organics etc. but everything was collected by the same truck and mixed in the same trunk.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rainbowmverse 9y agoMore of a garbage nebula.
- Kenji 9y agoI am always amazed about how surprised people are that materials that are specifically engineered to decompose as slowly as possible are in fact doing just that.
- nsaslideface 9y agoCould it be that the surprise is actually at the fact of the materials being dumped into the ocean rather than contained in landfills and the like?
- flavor8 9y agoSo how _does_ the plastic get into the ocean? Clearly litter washes into rivers during storms and thus ends up in the ocean, but that seems like it must be a relatively insignificant source. Are there countries who are dumping barges full of trash out at sea? Which ones?
- soperj 9y agoVictoria BC actually pipes all sewage right out to sea currently. So anything w/ micro plastic beads gets sent right into the ocean. This is also the case with the storm drainage system, so anything left on the road also right into the ocean.
- irrational 9y agoSource? That's crazy if true. I assumed only poor 3rd world countries still did stupid stuff like that.
- soperj 9y agohttps://thetyee.ca/News/2015/01/26/Victoria-Raw-Sewage-Dumping/ https://thetyee.ca/News/2015/01/26/Victoria-Raw-Sewage-Dumpi... There's one for you. People here actively protest against building a tertiary system for tax reasons and because they think they don't need it (there's actually a lot of people who even think that it's less environmentally friendly to have it dealt with on land). It's been an on going debate for over 30 years. These people also see themselves as "green".
- chaoticmass 9y agoThis news seems to pop up every few months ever since it was first reported on about 10 years ago.
- chaoticmass 9y agoActually, per Wikipedia, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been known about since 1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
- cobbzilla 9y agoDoes anyone have any follow-up on this article from 2011 titled "Marine microbes digest plastic" [1]? Seems like some kind of bacteria can consume our discarded hydrocarbons. https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.html https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.h...
- eveningcoffee 9y agoThis is very very bad idea because this bacteria can also consume the not discarded plastics (unless this only happens under certain controlled conditions).
- cobbzilla 9y agoin the article i cited, these bacteria were discovered to be out there in the ocean consuming plastic. so the genie is already out of bottle, so to speak. i'm curious if any negative externalities have been found due to their activity, or more optimistically, do they really metabolise the hydrocarbons into something non-toxic that other life forms can use?
- sliverstorm 9y agoThe genie may be out of the bottle, but maybe if we cut off its food supply before it gets on land...
- pgeorgep 9y agoAnd they said it was a myth just like the Bermuda Triangle...
- brianbreslin 9y agoIf we selfishly look up the food chain, how does this affect fish we eat? What are the human health impacts of eating fish that ate micro-particles of plastic?
- DanBC 9y agoThe plastic absorbs various pollutants. Fish eat the microplastic, and thus the pollutant. Bigger fish eat small fish, and we eat those bigger fish.
- sporkenfang 9y agoI think the answer is to put the money you'd spend eating fish toward solutions for this so that fish is safer to eat again, until that's true.
- trumpownsyou420 9y agofake news
- spodek 9y agoAlso mentioned in the article: 91% of plastic is not recycled. How many readers have disposed of a plastic container today?
- danschumann 9y agoPlastic Plastic Everywhere, but not a drop to drink... I still won't be drinking ocean water any time soon.
- danschumann 9y agoDo you think there will be de-plastic-zation plants like de-salinization plants in the future? ( will we ever run out of plastic? )
- sddfd 9y agoThis is not a problem. Microorganisms are already evolving to metabolize plastic: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching-bacteria-could-fuel-a-recycling-revolution https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching-bacteria-c... The real problems start when microorganisms that can metabolize plastic become so ubiquitous that plastic will rot over time.
- dTal 9y agoGood. Humans are clearly not responsible enough to safely manage a non-biodegradable material. Like antibiotics, we slung it all over the place inappropriately, and now it is going away.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago> microorganisms that can metabolize plastic Subject of a Doomwatch episode in 1970: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0564476/?ref_=ttep_ep1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0564476/?ref_=ttep_ep1
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- summer_steven 9y agoIf the patch is bigger than Mexico, then why doesn't the article provide a picture? A Google Earth link? Color me suspicious - and I used to trust National Geographic
- merpnderp 9y agoAlways good to keep in mind that this plastic will be consumed by bacteria. Sunlight and wave motion break apart the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces until bacteria completely consumes it. Even so, we really need a solution to keep plastic out of the oceans for a plethora of reasons. One of the most alarming ones being the largest consumer of plastic in the ocean is the same bacteria which can cause flesh eating disease.
- kwhitefoot 9y agoIt's also consumed by fish, which in turn means by humans. So we should fix it even if only out of narrow self interest.
- titzer 9y ago> Always good to keep in mind that this plastic will be consumed by bacteria. Sunlight and wave motion break apart the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces until bacteria completely consumes it. That's all just speculation. Recent discoveries suggest some bacteria may be able to (http://www.iflscience.com/environment/bacteria-evolving-eat-plastic-dump-into-oceans/ http://www.iflscience.com/environment/bacteria-evolving-eat-...), but there hasn't been any demonstrated at-scale digestion of plastic by them.
- sitkack 9y agoThis needs a solar powered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization plant to eat the whole thing.
- markdown 9y agoA massive ocean-going Mr. Trash Wheel. http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/bal-mr-trash-wheel-gets-his-googly-eyes-temporarily-20151030-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/...
- sitkack 9y agoThat has AVAM written all over it. I accidentally left off the googley-eyes in my hastily scrawled recommendation. > The wheel has removed 331 tons of trash since it was installed in May, according to the initiative. Nice
- bamboozled 9y agoThere is also "The Ocean Cleanup" project [1] which is worth checking out if you haven't already. It's a pretty cool project which is under active development and in the prototype phase. [1] https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/
- radarsat1 9y agoSo what is the behaviour of this stuff? How does it come together to form "patches"? If it really agglomerates naturally into (admittedly, very big) clusters this actually sounds kind of like good news, as it seems more viable to come up with a way to clean it. But I'm curious what the mechanism is. Static electricity? Sounds too distant and "wet" for that to be possible. But why else would it cluster?
- blondie9x 9y agoMost plastic bottle and bags will never be recycled. Avoid it like the plague.
- ams6110 9y agoEven if you think you are recycling it, it might be going to the landfill anyway. Only a few plastics, also aluminium and cardboard, are profitably recyclable. In some areas all the rest just goes to the landfill.
- kbutler 9y agoMoore has a history of exaggerating his plastic finds. His original account: "as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments." http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/172720/trash-revisited http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/172720/trash-revis... This contrasts with other estimates of one to two bottle caps worth of plastic per 50 Olympic swimming pools worth of water. A decade later he backed off those claims, emphasizing the micro particles. amp.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_next_20/2016/09/the_great_pacific_garbage_patch_was_the_myth_we_needed_to_save_our_oceans.html Other scientists say it is troubling, but exaggerated, and not getting worse in spite of increased production and use of plastic: http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-“garbage-patch”-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-“gar...
- titzer 9y agoAs someone who has picked up literally tons of plastic trash off Pacific beaches with my bare hands, let me be the first to say that you have no idea what you are talking about. Charles has consistently been on the forefront of discovery in environmental concerns and has been proven right over and over again, and you want to berate him for exaggerating. He's not exaggerating, he's just ahead of the curve. Also, please don't conflate estimates with eye witness accounts. If you want to dispute his claims, use data from actual expeditions. > http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-%E2%80%9Cgarbage-patch%E2%80%9D-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic-%E2%... This article is from 2011. If you RTFA above, you'd have noticed that things have gotten significantly worse in just 6 years. What's changed since then? Organized, industrial scale dumping from eastern pacific countries (Indonesia in particular).
- kbutler 9y agoGarbage on beaches is by definition not garbage in the "patches." If you are picking up plastic with your bare hands, you're not picking up the microplastics which even Moore now describes as the problem with the garbage patches. At best you can say that plastic chunks you pick up are hopefully not going to end up as microplastic bits in the gyres. "[for a week] plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments" -- Moore, 1998(?) vs. "It was and is a thin plastic soup, a soup lightly seasoned with plastic flakes, bulked out here and there with “dumplings”: buoys, net clumps, floats, crates, and other “macro debris.”" -- Moore 2011, in the slate article above And regarding the "plastic soup", every eye witness account I've found except Moore's say it's visually just ocean water, and occasionally you find a chunk of junk. (e.g., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sea-unworthy-a-personal-journey-into-the-pacific-garbage-patch-slide-show/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sea-unworthy-a-pe...) Another research group cited in the Slate article decided to phrase it as "plastic smog" rather than soup. When I've found videos or pictures claiming to be from the garbage patch, they're either of garbage-clogged harbors, or of an item or tangle of debris surrounded by clear blue waters, or as you describe, beaches with garbage. Do you have other pictures? Where Moore has historically over-sensationalized his descriptions, I find I take his sensational descriptions with a grain of salt. This isn't to say plastic in the oceans isn't a concern, or isn't something we should work really hard to avoid, just that sensational claims, along with sensational estimates need critical examination, rather than simple acceptance. "Bigger than Mexico!" What does that even mean? An area the size of Mexico has detectable bits of plastic? What's the density threshold that defines the area? And they made this size estimate based on a single traversal? This suggests the size estimate is based more on the area of currents rather than measurement of the particulate density. If you have better documentation of the area claim or densities than was given or linked from R-ing-TFA above, I'd love to see it. Something more along the lines of that 2011 study you glibly dismiss: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234157160_Plastic_pollution_in_the_South_Pacific_subtropical_gyre_Marine_Pollution_Bulletin_68_71-76 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234157160_Plastic_p...