In 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.<p>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.<p>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)<p>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.
At 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.<p>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.
No 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.<p>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.
This sort of thing is not helpful in the fight against plastic waste.<p>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!".<p>"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.<p>A quixotic fools errand.
Just last night I was wondering what happened to this project. Happy to see it's still going!<p>They should disperse iron oxide dust downstream while they're at it.
I 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.
The 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.<p>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.
To raise awareness they should reshoot the rescue scene from <i>Castaway</i> with Tom Hanks.<p>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.
Working link: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-pacific-garbage-patch-floating-plastic-trap-deployed-again" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/great-pa...</a>