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These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plas

These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plastic waste you personally generate is still a good idea, of course, but if you really want to have an impact then stop eating fish. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-discarded-fishing-nets/ https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-disca... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-ga...

cesis 8y ago
Farmed fish is already more than 50% of market share https://qz.com/730794/the-future-is-here-people-are-now-eating-more-farmed-fish-than-wild-caught-fish/ https://qz.com/730794/the-future-is-here-people-are-now-eati...
- jmngomes 8y ago
  Farmed fish spend their lives in overcrowded and filthy enclosures (too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water). Their feed is ridden with chemicals and antibiotics. It's the same issue as "normal" poultry vs "aviary" poultry. I personally prefer to eat less fish and meat than eating animals that are bred and raised in awful conditions that optimize for revenue; the quality of the output speaks for itself. - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-raised-fish-not-free-mercury-pcb-dioxin/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-raised-fish-... - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/01/is-farming-salmon-bad-for-the-environment https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/01/is-farmi... - https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/fish/aquafarming/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-fa... - http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1663604,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1663604,0... - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/10/scottish-fish-farmers-parasite-pesticide https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/10/scottish...
  - pvaldes 8y ago
    > too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water Please don't spread fake ideas created for propaganda purposes without a minimum of critical thinking. This is false. Maybe you aren't aware of this, but the water in marine aquaculture tanks is replaced constantly by fresh, clean water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If the pumps stop the fishes would die in hours. Not to mention that many, many species of fishes love to school and feel much better when are crowded. Specially when they are young. Some fishes just do not care about being kept in water of lower quality. Carps for example work tirelessly to mudd its tank stirring sediments from the bottom. Are brain-wired to do this. Aquaculture of marine fishes is a totally different world than Pangasius or Tilapia aquaculture.
ehnto 8y ago
I am not sure that is good advice. Fixing the fishing industry is important, overfishing is rampant as is plastic waste from it. But fish is probably one of the best alternatives we have to other environmentally unfriendly meats we currently raise. As populations grow it is proving to be key to keeping everyone fed. Farmed fish most importantly will soon be the majority of fish consumed. Getting ocean based fishing to not use plastics will be very difficult but moving the majority of fishing into farms by making it more profitable could very well make that problem go away by reducing ocean fishing in general. Make trade restrictions on non-farmed fish and the demand for ocean fish from nations fishing with plastic would hopefully go down. If fish from the ocean now contains plastic it would probably be a health boon to only accept farm fish anyway. You might create a new problem of corporate fish farms decimating local fishermans livelihoods, which sucks. But at this rate they will overfish and pollute their own jobs away anyway.
- cageface 8y ago
  We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    As much as it would be great to get everyone on plant-based diets, it's not going to happen anytime soon. So I guess, for the environment at least, fish is the best we can do until then?
    - Djvacto 8y ago
      It doesn't have to be all or nothing! My wife has been vegetarian since I've known her, and vegan for a year and a half or so, and I never fully stopped eating meat until about the same time she went vegan. Before that, what happened to my diet was a reduction in the amount of meat consumed, and (for unrelated health-reasons), the cutting out of most red meat (I started with pork, and then barely ate red meat for a couple years) and shortly before starting to eat a vegetarian diet, I started only eating meat when we ate out (which is maybe 2-4 times a month for us). A few close friends of ours actively try to cut out red meat on most weeknights, for example. Some other friends simply try to incorporate vegetarian/vegan substitutes once a week, or other similar amounts. Whether your concerns are environmental, for health reasons, or about the ethical treatment of animals, you can adjust your diet as much or as little as you want and still have some sort of impact. Just like you don't have to sell your car and bike to work every day in order to cut down on your footprint by, say, biking to the nearby stores instead of driving.
hycaria 8y ago
Picture clearly shows plastic bags though
titzer 8y ago
Citation needed. 8 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year. You're telling me there's 4 million tons (8 billion pounds) of fishing nets every year? Nope.
- cageface 8y ago
  Citations provided in original comment. Take it up with national geo if you have isssues with it.
  - jopsen 8y ago
    The articles talk about "the great Pacific garbage patch". It's not clear that this goes for all garbage in the oceans. Still very surprising though, seems like something that could be regulated.
  - titzer 8y ago
    Note the article refers to the GPGP. FTA: "Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today." 79,000 tons < 8 million tons.
  - titzer 8y ago
    Meanwhile, from the other link (which also has numbers in the 10s of thousands of tons, not millions): "Cutting down on the amount of plastics we buy and learning to use this tricky material sensibly is still one of the most effective things we can do to live responsibly, help the planet, and inspire others to do the same. To find out how you can help make a change, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign!" Please don't distract by blaming fishing. And please read your own links. Fishing nets are a huge problem no doubt, but looking at numbers, we need to stop single-use plastics.
    - notacoward 8y ago
      Those statements are not mutually exclusive. Cutting down on the plastics we buy might still be one of the most effective things we as consumers can do even if fishing nets are an even bigger problem. Just like buying low-emissions cars might be an effective thing to do as a consumer even if most pollutants are emitted by industry. The fact is that we need to address both fishing and consumer use. Over-focusing on either one could be seen as distracting from the other, but it's not particularly helpful to bash other environmentally aware people over it. The problem is the people who don't even know or care.
atorodius 8y ago
Thanks for the links. I'm confused though, as everyone seems to claim something else is the "bulk of plastic". The links seem to talk about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch only, do you happen to have any insights into oceans at large? Or is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch the part of the ocean where most waste is and the rest is not interesting? I find it hard to find sources.
janekm 8y ago
If you do an image search for "Darrell Blatchley whale", you can see some pictures of various whale stomach contents... Unfortunately regular shopping plastic bags and rice bags appear to be the most common in terms of whale stomach contents. Perhaps because they float well...
tyingq 8y ago
The FB post mentions 40 kilos of plastic bags, so consumer waste seems a big part of this one. https://facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2689346287758609&id=216407245052538 https://facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=26893462877586...
belorn 8y ago
The survey linked is what they found in the great pacific garbage patch, but the numbers are a bit fishy if we use them generally. The yearly amount of fishing net sold world-wide is as far as I can see is significant less than the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean each year. That said, there are two large areas that contribute to ghost fishing. The fishing industry is getting centralized into fewer entities, and those might find it cheaper to discard nets rather than use costly manual labor to repair them or pay the cost of proper disposal. The second area is theft. A fishing net is basically an unguarded month of wages marked out with a bright buoy. I know fishermen that once they have a net stolen they will start removing the buoy for a while and simply drag for the net, which naturally increase the risk of loosing the net. If they can't find the net they don't even know if it is because they can't locate it or if it is because of more theft.
- notacoward 8y ago
  > the numbers are a bit fishy Good one. :)
legulere 8y ago
That was just one survey in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. At different places it looks completely different.
monk_e_boy 8y ago
You only need to walk along any beach in the UK. There are little 10cm to 2m lengths of rope mixed in with the seaweed all along the beach. We have local beach cleans every weekend and most locals pick up litter when we see it. But it is futile. Next high tide and more washes in. It's all along the coast. Every tiny bay, every rocky outcrop, the sea floor, in the waves, tangled in seaweed out to sea. It's crazy. Madness. And more boats go out and more nets are produced and more dolphins wash up dead and more seals wash up dead and more birds wash up dead.
mlrtime 8y ago
Shouldn't that say "stop eating wild fish" Surely most of the fish we eat is farmed which in no way impacts nets in the wild?
overthemoon 8y ago
This is still framed as a consumer problem rather than a regulatory problem--eat fish or don't, market participation isn't going to get you nearly as far as regulation.
- cageface 8y ago
  Regulation is slow and difficult, particularly when there are industries with a lot of lobbying money ready to fight it. I'm all for regulation but it will be too late if we don't do anything in the meantime.
  - chottocharaii 8y ago
    The market solution is a non-starter. We need laws.
    - dev_dull 8y ago
      You think blanket laws fixes it either? You need good, well thought out law free from lobbyist influence that tackle the heart of the issue. In other words, something extremely difficult to produce and often times hard to enforce. Or else you get more trash laws like making it illegal to serve water without asking in San Francisco.
      - your-nanny 8y ago
        you need more than laws, you need enforcement of those laws.
        anonuser123456 8y ago
        How do you enforce laws in international waters on foreign flagged ships?
        darkpuma 8y ago
        With a navy. Environmental protection is a better casus belli than most wars get.
philg_jr 8y ago
The US generally has sustainable fishing and farmed-fishing laws and monitor catches and stocks. I don't know if there is a law that tracks nets per boat, but maybe there should be. Regardless, if you keep track of where your fish comes from (US wild caught and US farm-raised [farmed excluding salmon because they eat more protein than they produce]), then you (as far as I know) are not contributing to these problems. Buying fish exported from countries lacking oversight is the real problem. https://www.seafoodwatch.org/ https://www.seafoodwatch.org/
pvaldes 8y ago
First of all this is not your common kind of whale, Is a beaked whale. As a sort of self-declared (minor) expert in the diet of Ziphius cavirostris I can tell you than this whale is not attracted by fishing nets normally IMHO. This species feeds at very deep waters and do not eat fishes normally. This plastic is sunken plastic. I had personally get some kg of plastic from stomachs of the same species named in the article. I remember a sac (from manure I think), and a lot of the same plastic bags that you can find in the supermarket. I remember also a small commotion in the faculty by, uh, a lot of diluted blood that ended in the wrong pipeline slowly leaking just in front of the main entrance but this is a different history... don't make me talk about it :-)
- olau 8y ago
  Aw, come on, let's get the full story.
thefounder 8y ago
Stop eating fish, meat and vegetables.
randomorton 8y ago
It's just bad whale design, if you filter water for plankton's, you get plastics too. So I wonder if we can build huge whales which run on solar energy and filter the ocean.
randomorton 8y ago
Bad whale design! Whales filter plankton out of millions of gallons of water but now they also end up eating plastic. We need to emulate whale design and power them through wind and solar energy then clean up the ocean.
asdffdsa 8y ago
That seems draconian; there's no way to buy other sources of fish (farmed, local, etc) that doesn't contribute to the problem of ocean pollution?

cesis 8y ago

Farmed fish is already more than 50% of market share https://qz.com/730794/the-future-is-here-people-are-now-eating-more-farmed-fish-than-wild-caught-fish/ https://qz.com/730794/the-future-is-here-people-are-now-eati...

jmngomes 8y ago
Farmed fish spend their lives in overcrowded and filthy enclosures (too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water). Their feed is ridden with chemicals and antibiotics. It's the same issue as "normal" poultry vs "aviary" poultry. I personally prefer to eat less fish and meat than eating animals that are bred and raised in awful conditions that optimize for revenue; the quality of the output speaks for itself. - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-raised-fish-not-free-mercury-pcb-dioxin/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-raised-fish-... - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/01/is-farming-salmon-bad-for-the-environment https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/01/is-farmi... - https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-farming/fish/aquafarming/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-fa... - http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1663604,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1663604,0... - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/10/scottish-fish-farmers-parasite-pesticide https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/10/scottish...
- pvaldes 8y ago
  > too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water Please don't spread fake ideas created for propaganda purposes without a minimum of critical thinking. This is false. Maybe you aren't aware of this, but the water in marine aquaculture tanks is replaced constantly by fresh, clean water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If the pumps stop the fishes would die in hours. Not to mention that many, many species of fishes love to school and feel much better when are crowded. Specially when they are young. Some fishes just do not care about being kept in water of lower quality. Carps for example work tirelessly to mudd its tank stirring sediments from the bottom. Are brain-wired to do this. Aquaculture of marine fishes is a totally different world than Pangasius or Tilapia aquaculture.

ehnto 8y ago

I am not sure that is good advice. Fixing the fishing industry is important, overfishing is rampant as is plastic waste from it. But fish is probably one of the best alternatives we have to other environmentally unfriendly meats we currently raise. As populations grow it is proving to be key to keeping everyone fed. Farmed fish most importantly will soon be the majority of fish consumed. Getting ocean based fishing to not use plastics will be very difficult but moving the majority of fishing into farms by making it more profitable could very well make that problem go away by reducing ocean fishing in general. Make trade restrictions on non-farmed fish and the demand for ocean fish from nations fishing with plastic would hopefully go down. If fish from the ocean now contains plastic it would probably be a health boon to only accept farm fish anyway. You might create a new problem of corporate fish farms decimating local fishermans livelihoods, which sucks. But at this rate they will overfish and pollute their own jobs away anyway.

cageface 8y ago
We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  As much as it would be great to get everyone on plant-based diets, it's not going to happen anytime soon. So I guess, for the environment at least, fish is the best we can do until then?
  - Djvacto 8y ago
    It doesn't have to be all or nothing! My wife has been vegetarian since I've known her, and vegan for a year and a half or so, and I never fully stopped eating meat until about the same time she went vegan. Before that, what happened to my diet was a reduction in the amount of meat consumed, and (for unrelated health-reasons), the cutting out of most red meat (I started with pork, and then barely ate red meat for a couple years) and shortly before starting to eat a vegetarian diet, I started only eating meat when we ate out (which is maybe 2-4 times a month for us). A few close friends of ours actively try to cut out red meat on most weeknights, for example. Some other friends simply try to incorporate vegetarian/vegan substitutes once a week, or other similar amounts. Whether your concerns are environmental, for health reasons, or about the ethical treatment of animals, you can adjust your diet as much or as little as you want and still have some sort of impact. Just like you don't have to sell your car and bike to work every day in order to cut down on your footprint by, say, biking to the nearby stores instead of driving.

hycaria 8y ago

Picture clearly shows plastic bags though

titzer 8y ago

Citation needed. 8 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year. You're telling me there's 4 million tons (8 billion pounds) of fishing nets every year? Nope.

cageface 8y ago
Citations provided in original comment. Take it up with national geo if you have isssues with it.
- jopsen 8y ago
  The articles talk about "the great Pacific garbage patch". It's not clear that this goes for all garbage in the oceans. Still very surprising though, seems like something that could be regulated.
- titzer 8y ago
  Note the article refers to the GPGP. FTA: "Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today." 79,000 tons < 8 million tons.
- titzer 8y ago
  Meanwhile, from the other link (which also has numbers in the 10s of thousands of tons, not millions): "Cutting down on the amount of plastics we buy and learning to use this tricky material sensibly is still one of the most effective things we can do to live responsibly, help the planet, and inspire others to do the same. To find out how you can help make a change, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign!" Please don't distract by blaming fishing. And please read your own links. Fishing nets are a huge problem no doubt, but looking at numbers, we need to stop single-use plastics.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    Those statements are not mutually exclusive. Cutting down on the plastics we buy might still be one of the most effective things we as consumers can do even if fishing nets are an even bigger problem. Just like buying low-emissions cars might be an effective thing to do as a consumer even if most pollutants are emitted by industry. The fact is that we need to address both fishing and consumer use. Over-focusing on either one could be seen as distracting from the other, but it's not particularly helpful to bash other environmentally aware people over it. The problem is the people who don't even know or care.

atorodius 8y ago

Thanks for the links. I'm confused though, as everyone seems to claim something else is the "bulk of plastic". The links seem to talk about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch only, do you happen to have any insights into oceans at large? Or is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch the part of the ocean where most waste is and the rest is not interesting? I find it hard to find sources.

janekm 8y ago

If you do an image search for "Darrell Blatchley whale", you can see some pictures of various whale stomach contents... Unfortunately regular shopping plastic bags and rice bags appear to be the most common in terms of whale stomach contents. Perhaps because they float well...

tyingq 8y ago

The FB post mentions 40 kilos of plastic bags, so consumer waste seems a big part of this one. https://facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2689346287758609&id=216407245052538 https://facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=26893462877586...

belorn 8y ago

The survey linked is what they found in the great pacific garbage patch, but the numbers are a bit fishy if we use them generally. The yearly amount of fishing net sold world-wide is as far as I can see is significant less than the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean each year. That said, there are two large areas that contribute to ghost fishing. The fishing industry is getting centralized into fewer entities, and those might find it cheaper to discard nets rather than use costly manual labor to repair them or pay the cost of proper disposal. The second area is theft. A fishing net is basically an unguarded month of wages marked out with a bright buoy. I know fishermen that once they have a net stolen they will start removing the buoy for a while and simply drag for the net, which naturally increase the risk of loosing the net. If they can't find the net they don't even know if it is because they can't locate it or if it is because of more theft.

notacoward 8y ago
> the numbers are a bit fishy Good one. :)

legulere 8y ago

That was just one survey in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. At different places it looks completely different.

monk_e_boy 8y ago

You only need to walk along any beach in the UK. There are little 10cm to 2m lengths of rope mixed in with the seaweed all along the beach. We have local beach cleans every weekend and most locals pick up litter when we see it. But it is futile. Next high tide and more washes in. It's all along the coast. Every tiny bay, every rocky outcrop, the sea floor, in the waves, tangled in seaweed out to sea. It's crazy. Madness. And more boats go out and more nets are produced and more dolphins wash up dead and more seals wash up dead and more birds wash up dead.

mlrtime 8y ago

Shouldn't that say "stop eating wild fish" Surely most of the fish we eat is farmed which in no way impacts nets in the wild?

overthemoon 8y ago

This is still framed as a consumer problem rather than a regulatory problem--eat fish or don't, market participation isn't going to get you nearly as far as regulation.

cageface 8y ago
Regulation is slow and difficult, particularly when there are industries with a lot of lobbying money ready to fight it. I'm all for regulation but it will be too late if we don't do anything in the meantime.
- chottocharaii 8y ago
  The market solution is a non-starter. We need laws.
  - dev_dull 8y ago
    You think blanket laws fixes it either? You need good, well thought out law free from lobbyist influence that tackle the heart of the issue. In other words, something extremely difficult to produce and often times hard to enforce. Or else you get more trash laws like making it illegal to serve water without asking in San Francisco.
    - your-nanny 8y ago
      you need more than laws, you need enforcement of those laws.
      - anonuser123456 8y ago
        How do you enforce laws in international waters on foreign flagged ships?
        darkpuma 8y ago
        With a navy. Environmental protection is a better casus belli than most wars get.

philg_jr 8y ago

The US generally has sustainable fishing and farmed-fishing laws and monitor catches and stocks. I don't know if there is a law that tracks nets per boat, but maybe there should be. Regardless, if you keep track of where your fish comes from (US wild caught and US farm-raised [farmed excluding salmon because they eat more protein than they produce]), then you (as far as I know) are not contributing to these problems. Buying fish exported from countries lacking oversight is the real problem. https://www.seafoodwatch.org/ https://www.seafoodwatch.org/

pvaldes 8y ago

First of all this is not your common kind of whale, Is a beaked whale. As a sort of self-declared (minor) expert in the diet of Ziphius cavirostris I can tell you than this whale is not attracted by fishing nets normally IMHO. This species feeds at very deep waters and do not eat fishes normally. This plastic is sunken plastic. I had personally get some kg of plastic from stomachs of the same species named in the article. I remember a sac (from manure I think), and a lot of the same plastic bags that you can find in the supermarket. I remember also a small commotion in the faculty by, uh, a lot of diluted blood that ended in the wrong pipeline slowly leaking just in front of the main entrance but this is a different history... don't make me talk about it :-)

olau 8y ago
Aw, come on, let's get the full story.

thefounder 8y ago

Stop eating fish, meat and vegetables.

randomorton 8y ago

It's just bad whale design, if you filter water for plankton's, you get plastics too. So I wonder if we can build huge whales which run on solar energy and filter the ocean.

randomorton 8y ago

Bad whale design! Whales filter plankton out of millions of gallons of water but now they also end up eating plastic. We need to emulate whale design and power them through wind and solar energy then clean up the ocean.

asdffdsa 8y ago

That seems draconian; there's no way to buy other sources of fish (farmed, local, etc) that doesn't contribute to the problem of ocean pollution?