ROVs Discover Deep Sea Trash

An anonymous reader writes "Deep beneath the ocean's waves, strange creatures such as rockfish and gorgonian coral thrive in the icy depths. Yet there's something else you'll find if you go searching beneath the sea: trash, and lots of it. Researchers have discovered that our trash is accumulating in the deep sea, particularly in Monterey Canyon off of the coast of California. Scientists knew that trash was affecting shallower depths--about 1,000 feet beneath the water. Yet they were unsure whether the effects extended to the truly deep parts of the ocean that reached up to 13,000 feet. They decided that there was only one way to find out: look for themselves."

Comments

it'll be there for a while, too

[Trepidity]

The great thing about deep-sea trash is that it decomposes extremely slowly compared to stuff at shallower temperatures, so it'll be around for a while...

Re:it'll be there for a while, too

[MagusSlurpy]

Great news for 22nd century anthropologists!

Re:it'll be there for a while, too

[hcs_$reboot]

Man creates deep sea trash that decomposes slowly due to low temperatures. So, man created also global warming, to raise oceans temperature, and accelerate trash decomposition.

Re:it'll be there for a while, too

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Perhaps you might want to delay spending money on utopian projects with no obvious short term (less then a century?) benefits before you can, for example, provide healthcare to your fellow compatriots? If it indeed doesn't decompose, it's going to be stable for a while. Not dumping more stuff seems like a good proposition, but what you're suggesting would be very costly, time-consuming, and the net result would be...you know...a big pile of trash you would have to put somewhere?

Re:it'll be there for a while, too

[Spudley]

The great thing about deep-sea trash is that it decomposes extremely slowly compared to stuff at shallower temperatures, so it'll be around for a while...

Awesome! Maybe in a few thousand years, someone will mine it for old copies of the Atari ET game catridge.

Re:it'll be there for a while, too

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I have no objections agains that. I even contemplated whether it wouldn't be useful to sweep the Great Pacific garbage patch with some kind of automated vessels. You know, all the floating plastic that is actually photodecomposing into toxic chemicals as we speak. Plastic actually *can* be decomposed into light hydrocarbons with thermal depolymeration.

Aluminum cans are obviously low-hanging fruit, but it's much cheaper to collect them as early after being emptied as possible rather then to scour them from the depths of the ocean.

The bias might be in your interpretation...

[Camael]

...because they did address the points you made in the source article.

First, the trash doesn't seem to "accumulate" on the sea floor, but appears to get buried over time, removing it from the ecosystem.

They specifically admitted this in the article. The specific quote reads : "A lot of it gets buried by underwater landslides and sediment movement. Some of it may also be carried into deeper water, farther down the canyon."

Furthermore, they haven't actually shown significant negative effects.

Which the study also admitted. They even pointed out that the rubbish was sometimes benefited the marine life. The specific quote reads : "Other effects on marine life were more subtle. For example, debris in muddy-bottom areas was often used as shelter by seafloor animals, or as a hard surface on which animals anchored themselves. Although such associations seem to benefit the individual animals involved, they also reflect the fact that marine debris is creating changes in the existing natural biological communities."

I think that it is unfair for you to accuse these researchers of telling lies and being biased.

News at 11

[ledow]

Stuff that sinks, sinks.

Quite what were they expecting? Rubbish like tyres and ropes (i.e. stuff that sinks), which are disposed of in/around water will end up at the bottom of the water. Is this shocking?

Sea animals might become trapped in it. Not news. Sea animals might use it. Not news.

Quite what is the point? To make those of us who DON'T realise what millions of tons of junk does when you throw it in an ocean think bad of themselves?

And, to be honest, on the sea-floor it's more likely to be buried than it is to decay. That's probably a good thing for the life down there. In a few million years it'll be rock again.

Are these "scientists" genuinely astonished that they discovered this rather than the alternative (which is presumably that there's no rubbish down there at all?). I was taught that dense stuff sinks back in primary school.

One major difference

[Viol8]

When a ship is deliberately sunk to create a reef ALL the volatiles and potentially toxic substances are removed. Basically all you are left with is iron and a few other metals which are enviromentally benign and are oxidised back to the minerals they came from in a few hundred years.. A shoe however is full of glues, polymers and other man made substances which could take literally millenia to decompose and poison the enviroment in the meantime.