31 ms·
Fish are eating lots of plastic
- guskel 9y agoMaybe toxic fish could curb overfishing.
- QAPereo 9y agoI've never felt better about having a lifelong dislike of fish.
- dev_throw 9y agoBioaccumulation 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-plastic-debris-and-sex/ http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-plasti...
- acdanger 9y agoYou have a trailing * leading to a 404 on the second citation. Try this: http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-plastic-debris-and-sex/ http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-plasti...
- dev_throw 9y agoThanks, I was having trouble with italicizing things :)
- cropsieboss 9y agoDo people really eat that much fish? I thought fish is mostly raised as fishmeal for cows. Making an even worse bioaccumulation chain.
- victornomad 9y agoyes, people do. Not all the countries are pure meat eaters...
- Practicality 9y agoYou know that fish is a type of meat, right?
- Symmetry 9y agoLots of cultures don't class fish in with most meats. In traditional Catholicism the rule against meat on Fridays didn't apply to fish and likewise with Japanese Buddhist rules against meat eating. It's sort of like how most people consider tomatoes to be vegetables even though they aren't, scientifically. Yeah, in 21st century English fish is a meat but it's non-centrally meat so the meaning is clear when you apply Gricean norms.
- Shikadi 9y agoWoah woah woah, hold up there. Scientifically speaking, a vegetable is the edible part of a plant. Tomatos are vegetables and fruits scientifically. This is like arguing that a square isn't a rectangle! Okay, carry on <3
- hnzix 9y ago> In traditional Catholicism the rule against meat on Fridays didn't apply to fish Beaver meat is also a-ok! https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/once-upon-a-time-the-catholic-church-decided-that-beavers-were-fish/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/once-...
- taneq 9y agoLikewise chicken is often not considered 'meat' despite clearly being the flesh of an animal. It's kind of weird, but not as weird as the people who think "a little bit of ham" in a salad doesn't count as meat.
- PerfectElement 9y agoEating lower in the food chain is a practical and accessible solution.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoyeah. 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?
- CuriouslyC 9y agoLean meats are also preferable to fatty, and animals that grow fast are preferable those that grow slowly. Pigs and chickens are fairly safe, and perfectly ethical if you source responsibly.
- mjevans 9y ago'farmed' fish might also be a good option while we (as a species) work out our waste issues.
- kharms 9y agoPer capita fish consumption is not radically different between East Asian and Europe/USA [0], while sperm count is. https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/fus/fus99/per_capita99.pdf https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/fus/fus99/per_capita99.pdf
- jxramos 9y agoI 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 9y agoHere 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.
- carapace 9y agoI 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?
- lend000 9y agoYou could probably get it off the ground a lot faster if you lost the self-replicating requirement. (Self-replication / self organization is super cool and a research field of mine, but still a ways away from production). Just make a lot of them to start with and clean them up when/if they're done. Or make them biodegradable.
- carapace 9y agoThe swarm is self-replicating, not each individual bot. (Have you ever read Alan Dean Foster's "Sentenced to Prism" (sic)?) The system is more like an ant nest. Self-replication is required to be able to make a lot of them in a reasonable amount of time. Once the bulk of the plastic has been sequestered excess robots will be glued together to make a floating island. There's no "done" state until/unless we stop throwing non-biodegradable matter into the Oceans.
- bsder 9y agoThat'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-eating-bacteria-20161116-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-plastic-eati... Bonus points if you can make the bacterium specific to particular kinds of plastic.
- harryf 9y agoPrediction: 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.
- yitchelle 9y agoThat's an interesting prediction. From what I can remember from a previous HN article, there is a bacterial that already eats plastics. How long would such a evolutionary step take place, I wonder?
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y agoNot really. Evolution doesn't stop. And living things adapt to new circumstances all the time.
- lowglow 9y agoYes, the bigger worry is that evolution will solve humans, but thankfully nature is already working on a cure for plastics[0]. [0] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chow-down-plastic-eating-fungus-180958127/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chow-down-plastic-e...
- sjg007 9y agoThere are some microbe that breaks down plastic. Maybe some sea life will form a symboitic relationship with with.
- lobster_johnson 9y agoThe 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.
- sml156 9y agoWhat's wrong with fish these days, They didn't do that when I was a kid.
- saagarjha 9y agoThat's because there wasn't as much plastic in the water for them to consume.
- pvaldes 9y agoAnd also cetaceans, sea-birds and turtles.
- fairpx 9y agoI was watching a documentary, that proposed Humans do as well, since we end up consuming some of the fish that eat that stuff.
- shellbackground 9y agoThat's exactly what article is talking about.
- userbinator 9y agoI 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 9y agoI'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.
- dheera 9y agoThey don't biodegrade quickly, but they quickly become brittle and turn into a bunch of flakes mixed with dirt and everything else in the junk pile. Also, "mined by junkers" isn't a very sustainable approach. There are only so many junkers and that number is reducing as society standards increase and they have better ways of making a living than hauling bottles to recycling centers.
- armenarmen 9y ago> There are only so many junkers and that number is reducing as society standards increase and they have better ways of making a living than hauling bottles to recycling centers. I think that the parent commenter meant Mining Companies when saying junkers. So large industrial mineral extraction operation from landfills and dumps, as opposed to 3rd world style picking through rubbish. I'd imagine that a ton of landfill waste would be comparable to relatively rich ore, and that harvesting it is perhaps less destructive/invasive than opening a new mine.
- acd 9y agoWe 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 9y agoChildren of Men/Fish
- trapperkeeper74 9y agoNo fucking shit, captain WaPo. VICE has been talking about this, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the gyres for years. It is also a virtual certainty there is plastic on every beach in the world, even the remotest islands. That's how bad macroplastic garbage and microplastics have become. Maybe we shouldn't have microplastic cosmetics and shouldn't let garbage flow out to the ocean?
- spodek 9y agoHardly 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.
- andy_ppp 9y agoHow 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 9y agoI 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?
- pitaj 9y agoCanned tuna is fairly common in the US but it certainly isn't seen as a luxury. I haven't consumed canned tuna in quite some time but as a kid I ate it weekly.
- corporateslave2 9y agoTwo cans of tuna a day is dangerous, did you google it?
- tomkinstinch 9y agoConsider 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
- toomuchtodo 9y agoHave you considered whey protein instead?
- adrianN 9y agoEggs are pretty easy to prepare. So are various dairy products.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y agoTuna populations are massively depleted. Consider switching to something else for environmental reasons.
- jogjayr 9y ago
- somberi 9y agoTwo 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-chart-6 https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/05/daily-... 2- https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21721328-escape-shopping-bag-triggers-idea-plastic-eating-caterpillars-could https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/217213...
- iNerdier 9y agoThe 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_ 9y agoIf 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 9y agoApproaching 80% of recycled aluminum is great, but remember that aluminum recycling rates in general are very good (~70%)
- vinchuco 9y agocoffee pods look a lot like those in seed starter kits. Startup idea?
- jwilk 9y agoThe 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?
- clebio 9y ago> This article was originally published on [theconversation.com.](https://theconversation.com/bait-and-switch-anchovies-eat-plastic-because-it-smells-like-prey-81607 https://theconversation.com/bait-and-switch-anchovies-eat-pl...)
- HNNoLikey 9y agoMy country just enforced a plastics ban one week ago. It is generally much cleaner but there's a lot of friction in retail establishments as most patrons were all too used to having their shopping packed in a plastic bag. Now we have to buy an eco-friendly bag every time we forget to carry one. A lot of customers are generally disgruntled but change is upon us and it must be embraced.
- turk183 9y agoLet'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 9y agoActually 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.
- Aron 9y agoJust proves how dumb they are. Plastic doesn't have any calories or hedonistic value at all really.
- pvaldes 9y agoWith 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 9y agoOk, 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?.