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Ninety-Nine Percent of the Ocean's Plastic Is Missing
sciencehabit writes Millions of tons. That's how much plastic should be floating in the world's oceans, given our ubiquitous use of the stuff. But a new study (abstract) finds that 99% of this plastic is missing. One disturbing possibility: Fish are eating it. If that's the case, "there is potential for this plastic to enter the global ocean food web," says Carlos Duarte, an oceanographer at the University of Western Australia, Crawley. "And we are part of this food web."
Is that water, the ultimate solvent -- or perhaps bacteria -- are breaking down the plastics back into it's components, and the ocean (much like the oil from the BP spill) is taking care of itself.
Naw, couldn't be. Go ahead and panic, hippies!
Wait. Isn't Slashdot supposed to link me to articles? I know no one RTFA, but if there isn't any link at all and just a blurb, what's the point?
Plastic has lots of energy (try burning it) and thus could be a food source in and of itself. Thus there could be a bacteria that is eating it. Where this is disturbing is that we like to put useful plastic things into the water such as fibreglass boats. Could there be a bacteria evolving that will start corroding our plastics?
Also the fish that eat it may now have a gut bacteria that will break it down.
Whatever the truth turns out to be I suspect it will be fascinating!
The tiny plastic beads and broken down bits end up in fish flesh, this has been established.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3020951/these-big-eyed-fish-are-vacuuming-up-our-plastic-pollution-at-night
Plenty of information on this out there. 19% of all fish caught in a single survey in Hawaii had plastic in the bellies.
tic.
Whoever thinks that plastic isn't already part of the global food web hasn't eaten at a McDonalds recently
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
The article doesn't say the fish flesh has plastic bits in it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
You're not a veggie. You're either a vegetarian or a vegan.
Unless you meant a vegetable, in which case you should fit right in with most of the Slashdot crowd.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Fish actually DO eat plastic and yes they cannot digest it. Ask any fisherman who fishes artificial lures. Sinking is still a contributing possibility as well.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
It getting into guts is a different problem.
Plastic microbeads are _excellent_ at absorbing many pollutants onto their surfaces.
When this is eaten in quantity, this can be a really efficient way for those pollutants to get into the fish - and hence into the food-chain.
Here's the "Science" magazine page:
http://news.sciencemag.org/env...
and here's the referenced paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...
"It wanted plastic"
George Carlin
maybe there have been vast over estimates of how much was there to begin with
Bingo. The problem probably isn't hippies underestimating the ability of the oceans to consume plastic. The problem is probably just hippies wildly overestimating the quantity of plastic escaping trash collection/recycling systems.
But this simple hypothesis won't be welcome among hippies because it fails to comport with the contaminated planet narrative, so it won't be considered or analyzed, and Obama help anyone among the researchers that dares to suggest it. Instead, theories about contamination of the food web will be indulged and, based on zero actual evidence, the fear mongering has now commenced.
We call this process `science.'
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Oceanographers are at a loss to explain the lack of plastic floating in our oceans. "Where the fuck did it go?" asked Omar Roberts, head of oceanography at the Skips Institute. "We've thrown shit-tons of plastic into the ocean. Where is it?"
Omar, though, has a theory. "The Kraken ate it. We're feeding the fucking Kraken. Jeeeesus!"
The original estimate was wrong.
Of course, this doesn't fit with the Enviro-Disaster meme that every new piece of information should headline with 'It's worse than we thought!'.
Hypothetical stuff causes hypothetical problems. Wow, I would have never thunk it! Let the paranoia.. er fun begin!
Before you claim troll show me where in the non-existent TFA (yes, I read this one) they come up with: 1) Their estimated "millions of tons". 2) How many "millions" are they claiming. 3) Why the only possible explanation is that fish are eating it (so now it's in your food). Nope, I'm not going to wait. They use a 1970 study that showed .1% of plastic washes into the ocean. This was the same time that we had TV commercials with American Indian's crying on TV because people on average were dumping their shit everywhere. We also had everyone pumping out CFCs for everything in a can.
I agree that "The Great Pacific Garbage Dump" is a huge problem, and know that the same problems exist in every ocean. Fantastic theories (or fantasy depending on your perspective) requires evidence, and there is none to back TFA. None of this addresses the real problems causing dumping (like greed and a lack of enforced regulation, or wars).
The last paragraph of TFA says it all. "We really don’t know what this plastic is doing.” So the point of the article telling people fish are eating the plastic is what exactly?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
the amount of plastic in the ocean numbers have always been riddle by flaws. I don't me out of bounds from error bars, I mean flaws. Everything from the 'garbage Island, to report of large amount of underwater plastic no one can seem to find.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm going to call myself a wise skeptic. Someone else provided the missing link to the original story which points out that the plastic volume is derived from a 40+ year old estimate of how much plastic washes into the ocean (0.1%.) This estimate, doubtless taken as an article of faith in the published work, is from a time prior to widespread recycling, the EPA (and its analogs in other industrialized nations) having teeth, bioplastics that are designed to degrade, improved waste management, billions spent on public awareness, sponsored programs such as Adopt-a-Highway and other environmental measures. They disregarded all of that, took the 0.1% figure from a obsolete study, multiplied it by the quantity of plastic being manufactured today ran with the figure.
This stuff is so transparent it's laughable. It deserves ridicule. Instead it's blessed with the benefit of the doubt because the worst case fits the narrative to which you've been trained to adhere.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
To most of you guys "plastic is plastic", that's all to it
But the truth is plastic is _more_ than mere plastic --- it is a combination of many types of chemicals, all mixed together to achieve the characteristics of the plastic that it needs to have
To see it another way, a plastic is like a steak. It is definitely _not_ only a piece of beef, but also the sauce (which itself is made of the starchy gravy - which can be broken up to other more basic components, - the flavoring [salt, sugar, spices, and so on]), plus the added chemicals, such as the aromatics (which is largely benzene group) that were formed when that beef was put over the fire
Same thing with plastics - it is not only the acrylic resins, but we also need to account for additives such as the plasticizers, color, elastomers, and so on, plus other chemicals that were produced as a by-product of the mixing of all those chemicals over a "heated process"
When we can eat steaks, the different bacteria inside our guts dissolve different ingredients from the steak that we have eaten
Bacteria are not like human beings - they do not have other bacteria in their guts !
Most often a type of bacterium may be able to digest a type of ingredient within a type of plastic, and that is all to it, which means, the other chemicals inside the plastic are still left intact, not dissolved, not digested, not broken down
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !