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Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles

Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles. Presumably there’s exponentially more smaller ones that I couldn’t as easily see. Some of the beaches had plastic floating in the water. Locals said it wasn’t island dumped garbage, it was brought in from currents from the ocean. Horrific to see.

stephengillie 8y ago
Just got back from a trip asking the Washington State coast, including Westport and Ocean Shores, and Birch Bay near Bellingham. The beaches were nearly pristine, for the number of people there. I only saw the occasional lost sandal on the various beaches, and a few beer cans near bonfire dugouts. I was surprised at the lack of plastic and debris, given reports like yours. Is there a state or federal agency that combs America's beaches?
- selectodude 8y ago
  Usually the municipality sweeps the beach every morning.
  - kartan 8y ago
    > Usually the municipality sweeps the beach every morning. This. People don't realize how costly can be to maintain a beach in a good state. I remember getting early to the beach seeing one of this https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/BronzeOldfashionedKarakul https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/BronzeOldfashionedKarakul Even more expensive is beach nourishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_nourishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_nourishment Cleaning work is ungrateful because people only notice it when you do a bad job.
    - stephengillie 8y ago
      Do they normally comb the privately-owned beaches that border the public beaches too? A lot of Ocean Shores is privately-owned, and it's bordered by private beaches. Most beach wanderers are accidentally trespassing. Also, how do they clean the beaches where automobiles are not allowed? Part of Ocean Shores beach doesn't allow cars. And what about the miles of sand dunes, rocky beaches, jettys and other places cars can't go? How do so few people keep clean so much coastline? Are they training seagulls and deer to pick up litter? It doesn't scale...
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      Ugh. Sometime in the 90s we went to the Maldives and they used one of those beach nourishment devices early in the morning, every couple of days. When we went scuba diving and swimming the consequences of their auto-dredging/sand spraying contraption were horrific, extensive and obvious to all. The organised diving trip to the local reef was to a mainly dead, slime covered reef. Talking with the locals, who were the maintenance and wait staff, made it plain we'd chosen the "wrong" island for experiencing the Maldives. It was that holiday and the stupidity we saw that significantly changed our environmental awareness and views.
- mistrial9 8y ago
  Pacific Northwest coast has ocean current flowing strongly from North to South.. all the way down to California..
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    The Columbia hits the Pacific like a firehose hitting pavement, where it spreads in all directions - south past Oregon and California, and north past Washington and British Columbia. This flow is slowly eroding Ocean Shores and other coastal towns. The Quinault tribe is asking the Federal Government to give them some of the Olympic National Forest, to replace the coastal part of their reservation which has washed away.
jcims 8y ago
Where did you visit? Just made our first trip there and visited beaches up and down the west side of Maui and didnt notice anything but the odd bit of beach glass. I'm guessing currents play a large role with this issue.
gerdesj 8y ago
Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized Bollocks (citation needed)
- code_duck 8y ago
  A citation is needed for a first person account? Photographs, perhaps.
pokemongoaway 8y ago
Which island?
kingkawn 8y ago
For those asking for pictures, I didn’t take any of the plastic in the water, only the beach. It was near Laie on Oahu. It seemed current and shoreline dependent. https://postimg.cc/gallery/2d0q09gqk/ https://postimg.cc/gallery/2d0q09gqk/
- wisdomdata 8y ago
  On remote beaches I have visited in Australia there are large items but nothing like the amount of small items in this photo. I wonder if you could use machine learning to automatically classify plastic in photos like this based on color and shape. People could then submit all photos like this from all over the world to build a database of plastic levels, which could be used with ocean currents to provide source information. Maybe it has happened.
jmcgough 8y ago
Experienced something similar in Phi Phi last year. I was snorkeling in an emerald green lagoon, when a pile of plastic garbage floated into me :(
- yodsanklai 8y ago
  I went to Koh Lanta in July, the beach was disgusting, covered with garbage, worst I've ever seen. Many beaches in the Philippines, or Indonesia are very dirty too.
searealist 8y ago
How would locals know where the garbage came from?
- bdamm 8y ago
  Garbage can sometimes be identified. Think floating bottles with intact labels, yoghurt containers with a specific language, etc. anything so tiny that it can’t be identified is almost by definition part of the global flow because it takes time for plastic to break down.
  - searealist 8y ago
    ... and locals are using this logic?
    - Blackthorn 8y ago
      ...why wouldn't they be?
      - WalterSear 8y ago
        They are all commenters on hacker news.
- SerLava 8y ago
  I'm not caught up with the microplastics problem. But I suspect the locals had read testimony from scientists studying the problem. People really give a shit about pollution in Hawai'i. It also seems very unlikely that the quantity would be there without ocean currents bringing it in from the big offenders like China. Hawai'i has a pretty small population of people who are widely very concientious about polluting the ocean, compared to most other people in the world.
flattone 8y ago
4 months ago took a car to beaches up and down the west and east sides of a Oahu. No hotel / high traffic beaches considered here: bits of plastic across all beaches. A specific light blue tube plastic material never longer than a couple inches was spoted many times on both sides of the island, felt very like vacationing a sand trap for the world's trash.
- pq0ak2nnd 8y ago
  Visit Cyprus: their south-coast beaches are the worst I've ever seen in the Mediterranean: cigarette butts & plastic caps uniformly distributed in the sand to a depth of about 30cm. Oddly, just to the East, Crete's beaches were spotless, so it must be due to cleanup and not currents. Guessing.
  - kpil 8y ago
    Maybe the Cypriots just litter more. Cigarette butts and bottle caps seems locally generated...
mtalantikite 8y ago
Came here to say the same. We stayed in a beachfront house in Laie and the beach was covered in microplastics. Every morning there’d be workers raking the beach to clean it up, but the beaches would be covered in the microplastics again by the end of the day. While I was swimming I’d be surrounded by it as well. It seemed very much dependent on currents, as beaches further south on the windward shore were still pristine.
- scoggs 8y ago
  I guess in an ocean full of heavier (than most if not all common plastics) sediments and naturally occurring materials the plastic would find it's way to the top (from floating or being just below the surface. It would probably only sink if it was a significant chunk of plastic or something closed with a cap and/or is heavy enough to guarantee sinking. Maybe there could be some way to help sift things out more quickly? Something the regular beach cleaning / beautification staff could / would do without it adding an entirely new and extenuating task to their work days. My immediate thought was some sort of netting but as you said lots of the microplastics are invisible to the naked eye unless you realllly get down there. That type of net, beyond how expensive it would be having it cover any sort of significant percentage of US / World Beaches, would be pretty much only a nightmare for the majority of sea creatures of all sorts. The big nets seem good to keep sharks and other nefarious / dangerous sea going animals that could harm humans because the nets are large enough to allow everything BUT those big baddies through. This would be the exact opposite which means literally everything that lives or occasionally travels toward the ocean's coastal areas would be in danger. What I really want to see is somebody compile, with video, image, audio, and in person interviews with people with first hand accounts / stakes in the ocean's health / stakes in the world's health all of the different types of things like microplastics in the water / on the earth, ice caps melting and the fallout from that, any other evidence about how fast global warming is happening, what types of damage has already happened due to that global warming and obvious water level rise? I think if the average American / Human Earthling saw a video with a large collection of different real life scenarios that are already playing out / have already played out and have a serious, dangerous, and lasting effect on the planet and/or these people's lives / livelihood.
teekert 8y ago
I saw this in Vietnam as well, extremely unattractive beaches covered in plastic bags and smaller plastic waste. On the boat to Quan Lan island I saw Chinese tourists throwing dirty diapers and any other waste overboard as if it was the most normal thing to do.
kpil 8y ago
I think it's actually because of tsunamis and storms more than just negligence. An event like the Tōhoku tsunami creates massive amounts of garbage.

stephengillie 8y ago

Just got back from a trip asking the Washington State coast, including Westport and Ocean Shores, and Birch Bay near Bellingham. The beaches were nearly pristine, for the number of people there. I only saw the occasional lost sandal on the various beaches, and a few beer cans near bonfire dugouts. I was surprised at the lack of plastic and debris, given reports like yours. Is there a state or federal agency that combs America's beaches?

selectodude 8y ago
Usually the municipality sweeps the beach every morning.
- kartan 8y ago
  > Usually the municipality sweeps the beach every morning. This. People don't realize how costly can be to maintain a beach in a good state. I remember getting early to the beach seeing one of this https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/BronzeOldfashionedKarakul https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/BronzeOldfashionedKarakul Even more expensive is beach nourishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_nourishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_nourishment Cleaning work is ungrateful because people only notice it when you do a bad job.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    Do they normally comb the privately-owned beaches that border the public beaches too? A lot of Ocean Shores is privately-owned, and it's bordered by private beaches. Most beach wanderers are accidentally trespassing. Also, how do they clean the beaches where automobiles are not allowed? Part of Ocean Shores beach doesn't allow cars. And what about the miles of sand dunes, rocky beaches, jettys and other places cars can't go? How do so few people keep clean so much coastline? Are they training seagulls and deer to pick up litter? It doesn't scale...
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Ugh. Sometime in the 90s we went to the Maldives and they used one of those beach nourishment devices early in the morning, every couple of days. When we went scuba diving and swimming the consequences of their auto-dredging/sand spraying contraption were horrific, extensive and obvious to all. The organised diving trip to the local reef was to a mainly dead, slime covered reef. Talking with the locals, who were the maintenance and wait staff, made it plain we'd chosen the "wrong" island for experiencing the Maldives. It was that holiday and the stupidity we saw that significantly changed our environmental awareness and views.
mistrial9 8y ago
Pacific Northwest coast has ocean current flowing strongly from North to South.. all the way down to California..
- stephengillie 8y ago
  The Columbia hits the Pacific like a firehose hitting pavement, where it spreads in all directions - south past Oregon and California, and north past Washington and British Columbia. This flow is slowly eroding Ocean Shores and other coastal towns. The Quinault tribe is asking the Federal Government to give them some of the Olympic National Forest, to replace the coastal part of their reservation which has washed away.

jcims 8y ago

Where did you visit? Just made our first trip there and visited beaches up and down the west side of Maui and didnt notice anything but the odd bit of beach glass. I'm guessing currents play a large role with this issue.

gerdesj 8y ago

Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized Bollocks (citation needed)

code_duck 8y ago
A citation is needed for a first person account? Photographs, perhaps.

pokemongoaway 8y ago

Which island?

kingkawn 8y ago

For those asking for pictures, I didn’t take any of the plastic in the water, only the beach. It was near Laie on Oahu. It seemed current and shoreline dependent. https://postimg.cc/gallery/2d0q09gqk/ https://postimg.cc/gallery/2d0q09gqk/

wisdomdata 8y ago
On remote beaches I have visited in Australia there are large items but nothing like the amount of small items in this photo. I wonder if you could use machine learning to automatically classify plastic in photos like this based on color and shape. People could then submit all photos like this from all over the world to build a database of plastic levels, which could be used with ocean currents to provide source information. Maybe it has happened.

jmcgough 8y ago

Experienced something similar in Phi Phi last year. I was snorkeling in an emerald green lagoon, when a pile of plastic garbage floated into me :(

yodsanklai 8y ago
I went to Koh Lanta in July, the beach was disgusting, covered with garbage, worst I've ever seen. Many beaches in the Philippines, or Indonesia are very dirty too.

searealist 8y ago

How would locals know where the garbage came from?

bdamm 8y ago
Garbage can sometimes be identified. Think floating bottles with intact labels, yoghurt containers with a specific language, etc. anything so tiny that it can’t be identified is almost by definition part of the global flow because it takes time for plastic to break down.
- searealist 8y ago
  ... and locals are using this logic?
  - Blackthorn 8y ago
    ...why wouldn't they be?
    - WalterSear 8y ago
      They are all commenters on hacker news.
SerLava 8y ago
I'm not caught up with the microplastics problem. But I suspect the locals had read testimony from scientists studying the problem. People really give a shit about pollution in Hawai'i. It also seems very unlikely that the quantity would be there without ocean currents bringing it in from the big offenders like China. Hawai'i has a pretty small population of people who are widely very concientious about polluting the ocean, compared to most other people in the world.

flattone 8y ago

4 months ago took a car to beaches up and down the west and east sides of a Oahu. No hotel / high traffic beaches considered here: bits of plastic across all beaches. A specific light blue tube plastic material never longer than a couple inches was spoted many times on both sides of the island, felt very like vacationing a sand trap for the world's trash.

pq0ak2nnd 8y ago
Visit Cyprus: their south-coast beaches are the worst I've ever seen in the Mediterranean: cigarette butts & plastic caps uniformly distributed in the sand to a depth of about 30cm. Oddly, just to the East, Crete's beaches were spotless, so it must be due to cleanup and not currents. Guessing.
- kpil 8y ago
  Maybe the Cypriots just litter more. Cigarette butts and bottle caps seems locally generated...

mtalantikite 8y ago

Came here to say the same. We stayed in a beachfront house in Laie and the beach was covered in microplastics. Every morning there’d be workers raking the beach to clean it up, but the beaches would be covered in the microplastics again by the end of the day. While I was swimming I’d be surrounded by it as well. It seemed very much dependent on currents, as beaches further south on the windward shore were still pristine.

scoggs 8y ago
I guess in an ocean full of heavier (than most if not all common plastics) sediments and naturally occurring materials the plastic would find it's way to the top (from floating or being just below the surface. It would probably only sink if it was a significant chunk of plastic or something closed with a cap and/or is heavy enough to guarantee sinking. Maybe there could be some way to help sift things out more quickly? Something the regular beach cleaning / beautification staff could / would do without it adding an entirely new and extenuating task to their work days. My immediate thought was some sort of netting but as you said lots of the microplastics are invisible to the naked eye unless you realllly get down there. That type of net, beyond how expensive it would be having it cover any sort of significant percentage of US / World Beaches, would be pretty much only a nightmare for the majority of sea creatures of all sorts. The big nets seem good to keep sharks and other nefarious / dangerous sea going animals that could harm humans because the nets are large enough to allow everything BUT those big baddies through. This would be the exact opposite which means literally everything that lives or occasionally travels toward the ocean's coastal areas would be in danger. What I really want to see is somebody compile, with video, image, audio, and in person interviews with people with first hand accounts / stakes in the ocean's health / stakes in the world's health all of the different types of things like microplastics in the water / on the earth, ice caps melting and the fallout from that, any other evidence about how fast global warming is happening, what types of damage has already happened due to that global warming and obvious water level rise? I think if the average American / Human Earthling saw a video with a large collection of different real life scenarios that are already playing out / have already played out and have a serious, dangerous, and lasting effect on the planet and/or these people's lives / livelihood.

teekert 8y ago

I saw this in Vietnam as well, extremely unattractive beaches covered in plastic bags and smaller plastic waste. On the boat to Quan Lan island I saw Chinese tourists throwing dirty diapers and any other waste overboard as if it was the most normal thing to do.

kpil 8y ago

I think it's actually because of tsunamis and storms more than just negligence. An event like the Tōhoku tsunami creates massive amounts of garbage.