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Great Pacific garbage patch: giant plastic trap put to sea again
- quicklime 7y agoWorking link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-pacific-garbage-patch-floating-plastic-trap-deployed-again https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-pa...
- dang 7y agoFixed now. Thanks!
- tmalsburg2 7y agoI'm getting 404 page not found. Please fix the link.
- rcar1046 7y agoHand held. https://www.google.com/search?q=garbage+patch+trap+guardian https://www.google.com/search?q=garbage+patch+trap+guardian
- tmalsburg2 7y agoGuess what, I had figured it out myself. It's a good idea to fix the link nonetheless.
- s_dev 7y agoURL is fixable upon inspection -- OP hit ctrl+v twice by accident.
- pedalpete 7y agoI wish there were some details as to what was changed in the design. If it was just a repair, what is the likelihood of the beam breaking again.
- apricote 7y agoYou can read more about the design changes in their related blog post: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-design-upgrades-completed-to-be-relaunched-in-june/ https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-design-upgrades-c...
- te_chris 7y agoAt first I was against this, but then I realised that this, even if it fails, is the kind of audacious, well publicised scheme that we need. It's ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff, by definition of being a cleanup op, but hell, they're trying and I hope they work out how to make a meaninful difference.
- bubblewrap 7y agoIf it fails, it is a waste of money and resources. What about that would we "need"? Also, if it works, why not dump more plastic into the sea. After all, apparently we can simply fish it out again.
- baq 7y agofalse dichotomy
- bubblewrap 7y agoHow so?
- Robotbeat 7y agoBecause we are not resource-constrained, we are attention-constrained. More efforts like this beget more (& better) efforts.
- bubblewrap 7y agoWe are not resource-constrained? What on earth makes you think so? It is genuinely news to me. Has fusion power been discovered? And even if we were only attention constrained, a project that doesn't work would draw attention away from more promising ideas.
- Robotbeat 7y agoYes; it has been discovered in the daytime sky. But that's not the point. We aren't resource constrained. We're not struggling to eat; we have diseases of abundance. We're not running out of oil; we're drowning in plastic. It's not our resources that are lacking but our conscientiousness and enthusiasm for things worthwhile.
- patsplat 7y agoThere are 13 pieces of garbage in the sea. A giant plastic trap is deployed. There are 14 pieces of garbage in the sea.
- wompWompWomp 7y agoOh look! #14 has a handle attached, and we can use it to hoist all the other pieces into this big plastic boat, which then heads back home. There are zero pieces of garbage in the sea.
- Bootvis 7y agoVouched for parent. I think it's a valid reply to overly dismissive GP.
- patsplat 7y agoFrom the article: > A ship towed the U-shaped barrier from San Francisco to the patch in September to trap the plastic. But during the four months at sea, the boom broke apart under constant waves and wind and the boom was not retaining the plastic it caught.
- Aromasin 7y agoIt's almost like products need multiple iterations under real life test conditions before they become functional designs!
- vectorEQ 7y ago:s what are you talking about man, deploy to production already!
- mattkrause 7y agoHere's the actual incident report: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-001-learnings-root-causes-summarized/ https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-001-learnings-roo... It has a few goofy phrases ("unscheduled learning opportunity") but it seems like a pretty solid writeup. Their subsequent update also says they recovered both pieces of the boom and ~2 tons of garbage, so not a smashing success but it also could have been much worse.
- Tepix 7y agoI'm glad to see them working on this. We also need a solution for the microplastics that are at the bottom of the oceans.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoIn other news: After a 3 week charter to collect plastics from the nort-pacific gyre the Ocean Voyages Institute has arrived in Honolulu on board Sailing Vessel Kwai, with 40 tons of derelict fishing gear and consumer plastics. The vessel came home with room to spare and after more funds are raised, The Ocean Voyages Institute may charter Kwai or another ship for a longer expedition to collect a larger mass of plastic. It will probably be Kwai again, as she and her crew are specially suited to this kind of work; they often load and unload cargo in places with no-where to anchor. The OVI has been able to collect large quantities of plastic, very quickly, because they distributed GPS trackers to various vessels of opportunity. Such vessels volunteered to attach trackers to any debris they encounter while traversing the pacific, allowing the Kwai to sail straight for large clumps of plastic debris. The ocean plastics issue is a lot more complicated than these cleanup efforts make it seem. Large debris are just the tip of the iceberg. Microplastics, consumption of single-use plastics, the U.N.'s estimate that 600 tons of netting enter the ocean each year, etc. etc. (I want to emphasize those etc's because this list is quite long) Restoring and protecting the world's oceans requires more resources and I am honestly surprised how difficult it is to raise money to do the things which are required to sustain human life on earth. Utterly baffled. We launch satellites into space to broadcast 4K boxing to the last mile, but engineering new packaging materials, and zero-waste systems for distributing those packages is just beyond the pale.
- ar-jan 7y ago> Large debris are just the tip of the iceberg. One reason for The Ocean Cleanup's current work is to get the larger parts now, before they degrade to microplastics.
- hanniabu 7y ago600 tons of netting a year is just mind boggling, I can't imagine how many animals are getting tangled in that
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoIt is hard to estimate. When they remove the ghost net, any non-entangled animals will scatter. The OVI only found one dead, entangled swordfish during their operation. Mary Crowley thinks that entangled animals get eaten fairly quickly so it's hard to know how many have died in the nets. It still is not known why there were so few entangled animals found on this voyage. I have a suspicion that when The Ocean Cleanup says "the device had no environmental impact" they really are saying they did not find any entangled animals in the ghost nets they concentrated.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- marmadukester39 7y agoI think the correct solution here has got to be a combination of shifting to reuse of materials, not recycling (think standard size containers) and engineering of bacteria/organisms that can break down existing plastics, even in the deep ocean, perhaps in the stomachs of krill, minnows or other tiny foragers. Nothing else will get it all, the scale of the problem is just too diffuse.
- orev 7y agoWhich is why “recycle” has always been placed after “reduce” and “reuse” in the triangle. Everyone just ignored those other two because recycling doesn’t need as much of a lifestyle change, and if you’re a company you don’t want your customers to reduce or reuse.
- ncmncm 7y agoJust last night I was wondering what happened to this project. Happy to see it's still going! They should disperse iron oxide dust downstream while they're at it.
- andrewstuart 7y agoThis sort of thing is not helpful in the fight against plastic waste. It gives the impression that such a thing could make even the slightest dent, and it gives those who sell single use plastics a reason to say "see, it's under control!". "There isn't really a problem is there? Aren't there boats that pick the plastic up out of the ocean?" - silly as that might sound to you and I, that's the core message that many would pick up on, and other would amplify. A quixotic fools errand.
- chinathrow 7y agoI disagree. It's one of many steps we need to do right now and in the future: - Stop dumping/polluting waters - Clean up what is out there Boyan and his project cater for the second one and they're trying to solve a real, existing problem. Others are trying to solve other problems. What's wrong with that?
- andrewstuart 7y ago> What's wrong with that? It's pointless and sends a false message that "cleaning up the problem" is even vaguely possible. That false message will be picked up and amplified by "big plastic" companies like CocaCola to convince the public that they aren't in fact ruining the earth with their single use plastics. It has people like you convinced that it's possible to "clean up what is out there". It's not. If the tap broke in your kitchen and poured thousands of gallons of water on to the floor every minute, would you start mopping that up like crazy, as fast and hard as you can? Or would you first turn off the tap?
- esel2k 7y agoI disagree that it is giving a false message. I is also saying: „there is a need to clean our oceans because of the endless plastic.“ shocking amount of plastic might slowly help to change the mindsets. I will take time - maybe two generations - and then these children’s will understand that throwing plastic away (like you see in many countries) is just bad. I think it gives everyone deep down a sense of accountability...
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoNo environmental impact?! Its straining the top 3 meters of the ocean. Almost the entire mass of sea life is in the top 1 meter of ocean. This seems to be in the category of "preserving the happy human-appreciated creatures and ignoring everything else". Like saving whales or chimps, but not caring about insects, worms, frogs etc. which are the bulk of the ecosystem. And anybody got a citation for the harm done by this 'garbage patch'? Not just documentation of its existence. What effect, beyond the positive one of providing anchor points for algae etc in the life-rich upper meter.
- dangerface 7y agoThe garbage patch is a myth it doesn't exist. The garbage doesn't clump into a patch it spreads across the whole ocean about a foot under the surface. Calling it a garbage patch make it sound like not a big deal, some one can just go out in a boat and clean it, the problem is the whole ocean is filled with tiny plastic particles its a literal ocean of garbage not patch.
- ourmandave 7y agoTo raise awareness they should reshoot the rescue scene from Castaway with Tom Hanks. Where he's floating adrift and have him run into one of this things pylons. They could have him pop-up on a screen in a monitoring lab.