Comments on: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

By: webwisdom

webwisdom — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 15:39:32 +0000

Scientists discovered two pea size baby octopus floating on Hawaii trash https://www.theinforadar.com/2019/04/scientists-discovered-two-pea-size-baby.html

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:01:15 +0000

a bit deeper into those links.

(Note that this is from April 2008 — I knew I’d seen this some time ago, and thought it was general knowledge, well, among people who read anyhow)

http://nynerd.com/sailing-into-the-pacific-ocean-garbage-patch/

—-
We go all the way out ( 2 straight days on a sail boat) expecting to see a floating dump, looking for our money shot that will make us famous.

Hereâ??s the bad news, there is no money shot. What people donâ??t get is that itâ??s not really a patch and itâ??s not really an island, both of which you might be able to contain and control. No, what we found is much worse. Itâ??s like a gigantic toxic stew and itâ??s a big big problem that we need to pay attention to now.

We decided to go against the conventional wisdom that internet video is for those with short attention spans, and are rolling out 12 episodes.

You can go here to view the trailer for Toxic: Garbage Island and follow the series â?? http://www.vbs.tv/shows/toxic/garbage-island/

TOXIC Garbage Island Part 1 of 12 â?? http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
Searching out the Pacific Oceanâ??s mythical floating trash heap…..
(clickable links at the original blog post)

——

Looks like there might be more here, and at NOAA:
http://alguita.com/research/research_voyage_2005.html
“… in cooperation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), AMRF deployed the first-ever group of satellite tracking devices designed to monitor the way ghostnets and other large debris move around in the ocean. The crew were charged with the responsibility of attaching satellite tags to the four largest pieces of floating plastic or fishing nets they encountered, which they did successfully….”

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:54:05 +0000

a bit deeper into those links, this is from April 2008
(I’d seen this some time ago, and thought it was general knowledge, well, among people who read anyhow)

http://nynerd.com/sailing-into-the-pacific-ocean-garbage-patch/

—-
We go all the way out ( 2 straight days on a sail boat) expecting to see a floating dump, looking for our money shot that will make us famous.

We decided to go against the conventional wisdom that internet video is for those with short attention spans, and are rolling out 12 episodes.

You can go here to view the trailer for Toxic: Garbage Island and follow the series â?? http://www.vbs.tv/shows/toxic/garbage-island/

TOXIC Garbage Island Part 1 of 12 â?? http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
Searching out the Pacific Oceanâ??s mythical floating trash heap…..
(clickable links at the original blog post)

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:07:05 +0000

What I know is this: A major systematically designed research expedition went out to look and found no visible garbage, but they did find itty bitty peaces. I know that most/many of the photos of floating garbage can be ID’d as coastal …. because you can see the coast in the picture. The first blog post you cite is vague and hard to understannd, but the picture of the guy is with a net with garbage in it. It is a net full of seaweed as well. And, they say the “sailed” to the garbage patch. You can’t sail to the garbage patch because it is in the doldrums. No sailing there. And there is a big difference between what a net can drag up over an unspecified difference and shit floating in a giant island. So, I’ll stick with the research expedition results over some guy with a net.

That second link is interesting. I wonder what it is. Is it a letter to the editor? I’d love the opinion of the researchers who are studying this on the paragraph in question. I can’t find a single photo linked to the Alguita voyages of an island of trash. Or maybe that was a bad year for trash?

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:26:38 +0000

Oh, and

> tiny tiny itty bitty bits

Is this something you consider fake, or is it real? When you say the above, and that there’s no real garbage patch, it makes me wonder if all the photos we see are fakes like you describe, or if anything we see is real. Can you clarify?

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/great-pacific-garbage-patch-trash-vortex.php

Same question for the text descriptions, does this match your understanding of what’s real? Or is this overstating it?

http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=2004102408887CE&q=&uid=787375750&setcookie=yes

> Greanpeace

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:19:09 +0000

> there is plastic in there – now it must be established that >… this is a significant contributor to the mortality rate.

Not the point. This sort of thing is going to reduce fitness — plastic has an energy cost compared to food. The problem is well documented in many species. Look up condor mortality.

Point is — as that comment illustrates — that bad PR instead of clear presentation of good science encourates people who will take the opportunity to deny that there is good science.

After all, if there were good science, why the bad PR, eh?

Of course, a stolid scientists with great documentation of all the facts just gets killed on television.

Op. cit.: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/01/randy_olsons_new_blog_the_bensh.php (Greg, your ‘Check it out’ link at that posting is broken; current link is):
http://thebenshi.com/

By: Hank Roberts

Hank Roberts — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:42:31 +0000

> The people who made these films and other images may
> have been well intentioned by they were wrong to
> substitute made up shit for science.

Yep. When I see this crap and go crazy at them, I try to lead by saying the _real_ science is scary; their PR/marketing horror fantasy is crap, and people _can_ tell the difference.

Same problem with university press officers, as we hear often.

Do you think an entire species can win a Darwin Award?

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:36:02 +0000

@wolfwalker: Animals dying due to fishing nets etc (largely strangulation or ensnaring/drowning) has been known for a very long time. The question is: is it a significant cause of the chick/juvenile/adult mortality? Another question is, is this at all related to the “garbage patch” as is being claimed? So you see a bird cut open and there is plastic in there – now it must be established that the plastic is a problem and it must also be established that this is a significant contributor to the mortality rate. A hell of a lot of birds I’ve butchered and eaten over the years have had sand and small pebbles in their gizzard, but I don’t know of anyone who believes that sand and pebbles is a leading cause of death in birds. Not to mention I am not the least bit impressed by the BBC in general; they’ve peddled a hell of a lot of nonsense as ‘fact’; for all I know the alleged operation was like one of those “psychic surgery” things – another scam which journalists bought into. Once again there is this problem of “ooh, a claim + a carefully picked fact (if it is indeed a fact) = claim must be true!” That does not even superficially resemble science.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:36:35 +0000

Viking, all good points. Let me be very clear. No one who is concerned with marine conservation is NOT concerned with the garbage in the gyres. Everyone is concerned with this.

The reason that there ARE scientists who over the next months or year or so will be able to tell us what is actually happening is becasue they got the grant money and got their stuff together and are out there looking BECAUSE they are in fact indeedly do really and truly honest to green pumpkins fucking concerned about the trash.

BUT

When we see the bald faced substitution of estuarine garbage rafts for the garbabe patches, and we see images of birds that may or may not be linked (and probably are not) to the gyre areas, it is like having your very nice car stuck on the RR tracks and seeing the light of the oncoming train.

I have no idea why people would imagine for even a second that the neoconservative right wing anti science pro industry media thugs are going to just let this go by. It is probably already too late to stop this particular train. The people who made these films and other images may have been well intentioned by they were wrong to substitute made up shit for science.

In one case, Greenpeace produced a map that supposedly showed the Pacific water currents, but they made no sense. An oceanographer I know pointed out to the Greenpeace person that the arrows they had on the map were air currents, not the water currents (which helped explained why some of them went over land).

The answer from the Greenpeace person was to claim that it did not matter if the science was correct. It only mattered if the graphic worked as a fund raising tool.

Thas is shameful.

(Sorry, I get upset about it… I’ll go take a cold shower now.)

I’m glad to hear about the plastic bag ban. One was implemented in South Africa recently and worked very well.

By: Viking

Viking — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:28:46 +0000

Greg, I as well have been annoyed with the use of unrelated imagery to illustrate the “garbage patch”. The problem of poor reporting on science is clearly not limited to this issue. I realize that the science is not “settled” so to speak, but I think there is enough evidence here of a problem to apply the precautionary principal. Even if the “garbage patch” is not a huge problem in and of itself it is certainly at the very least a symptom of a larger problem. Here in American Samoa we have a huge near-shore trash problem. One of my colleagues does necropsies on sea turtles and nearly all of them have plastic in their gut, while it is not clear (to my knowledge) that plastic is related to the cause of death it would not be a stretch to intuitively say that plastic is not good for turtle health. On a positive note, the legislature here has passed a plastic bag ban that is expected to be signed into law by the governor. http://www.samoanews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=13366