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Fish Are Eating Lots of Plastic (washingtonpost.com)
Matthew Savoca, writing for the Washington Post: As you bite down into a delicious piece of fish, you probably don't think about what the fish itself ate -- but perhaps you should. More than 50 species of fish have been found to consume plastic trash at sea (alternative source - a little old). This is bad news, not only for fish but potentially also for humans who rely on fish for sustenance. Fish don't usually die as a direct result of feeding on the enormous quantities of plastic trash floating in the oceans. But that doesn't mean it's not harmful for them. Some negative effects that scientists have discovered when fish consume plastic include reduced activity rates and weakened schooling behavior, as well as compromised liver function. Most distressingly for people, toxic compounds that are associated with plastic transfer to and bioaccumulate in fish tissues. This is troubling because these substances could further bioaccumulate in people who consume fish that have eaten plastic. Numerous species sold for human consumption, including mackerel, striped bass and Pacific oysters, have been found with these toxic plastics in their stomachs. So why are fish eating plastic? According to studies cited in the report, plastic debris may smell attractive to marine organisms.
> So why are fish eating plastic? According to studies cited in the report, plastic debris may smell attractive to marine organisms.
I believe it. My cat loves to lick those plastic shopping bags from the grocery. According to the interwebz he is not alone, its because they taste like meat to some cats. Fortunately he has not yet tried to eat any of them.
Well, I eat Twizzlers, kind of the same thing.
Cue the fish that can digest plastic.
This is troubling because these substances could further bioaccumulate in people who consume fish that have eaten plastic.
This could be a disaster for the cannibals!
#DeleteChrome
From the fine article:
The next big question that it raises is whether plastic-derived contaminants can be transferred from plastic-eating fish to fish-eating humans.
If eating the plastic doesn't harm the fish, and causes no harm to the people that eat the fish, then why is this in the "health and science" section of the Washington Post? I mean, this is neat and all but is this something someone other than a biologist might find interesting?
I think that perhaps they should have held on to this until they actually figured out if the plastic eating habits actually do harm. But then again, if they saw nothing so far then haven't they already proven that if it is harmful that the harm is pretty minimal?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
of 30 years of outsourcing, automation and cheap work visas this is the least of my worries. That's sort of the problem. It's hard to get worked up about problems like this when 60-80% of us live paycheck to paycheck (depending on which study you want to believe).
If you're an environmentalist then you've got to take care of the economy first. Otherwise the vast majority of people will ignore it in favor of more pressing concerns (rent, food, etc). Does that make the working class short sighted? You damn well bet it does. It's hard not being short sighted when you live paycheck to paycheck.
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Perhaps he's creating a replacement for systemd. We can hope, right?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If we stop fishing for 10 years the oceans will be pristine again.
Look at you jiggling in your overstressed office chair because you thought you found an error in someone else's grammar, askance.
"Fish" is a collective noun, you nitwit. Fish as a concept. You can't count them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You dunce.
Holy mackerel! Some people have taken the bait, but there's no way this bio-accumulation is a red herring. You can tell a whale of a lie about it if you want, but the science is clear. Most of the lies come from catfishing accounts anyway - fake! Whenever I find those I just sit on my perch and clam up so I'm not doxxed through my squid proxy. They're mental shrimps, packed into troll factories like sardines. I try not to carp on it too much. Makes me crabby.
If we learn to treat the environment better, even just for the halibut, the world will be our oyster, and we'll hum a happy tuna minute.
And millennials eat a lot of fish. Is it a coincidence that so many millennials are transgender?
âoeFishâ is a perfectly acceptable plural. Itâ(TM)s even in the dictionary.
i fuckn luv where grammer not-sees sho they're ass
Who will tell us that we need some big government regulations to solve a problem they read about in the Washington Post. Or that socialism must be implemented to save humanity. Or some other bullshit.
Authoritarians all. Might as well be feudal lords for all it matters to them. As long as they've got their boot on your neck.
Nonsense, everyone knows fish won't eat plastic. This is all some kind of liberal conspiracy to try to make us feel guilty about throwing away our garbage.
Cock eggs! Cock eggs! Cock eggs!
Keep the trolling to the web.
A fish will eat whatever can fit into its mouth.
fishes are stupid!
rule 34?
Grow up, asshole.
Yeah, I'll be mature like you from now on.
the correct word is "fishes.
If this were a biology website. As it is, the headline is correct.
If only you could lose weight as easily as you lose arguments, huh Heavy Chris?
Two birds. Fish are yucky anyway.
People looking for a healthier diet should worry about plastic in fish indeed. But here we speak about suspected problems for which we have no much data.
On the other hand, we have a lot of data about unhealthy stuff that is very common in people diets: trans fats, refined sugar, fried food. First try to reduce that, and think about plastic in fish next.
And here I thought you were a primate.
I had the chicken.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the sea, fish eat fish. On land, chicken eat chicken parts, and cow eat cow parts. So which is better?
the lives of the working class are already so hard that anything would push them over the edge. That bottle of soda, that 6 pack of beer and that microwavable lunch are the bare minimum needed to see them through the day. That's life when you're working two full time jobs to keep a roof over your head and still not making it.
If I let the environment go to hell tomorrow so I can make it through today I'm still ahead by one day. By 'everyone's' problem you mean what's left of the middle class. That's the problem. The few people that held onto a middle class life abandoned the ones that didn't. Now they're upset that those people are trashing their nice lives and nice world. I see something similar with all these pundits asking "Why are White Men so angry?". They're angry because they don't have jobs or if they do those jobs can't support a family. Now we've got thugs organizing them to march lockstep chanting about jews replacing them...
TL;DR: Abandon your working class at your peril.
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Instead of asking yourself why you're only making $13/k a year you're looking down on folks struggling at $30k. That's exactly what your supposed to be doing, if you ask the ruling class. They've got you, me and everyone in the working class fighting among ourselves.
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That's what the working class needs. Right now we're getting picked apart fighting among ourselves. We need to start guaranteeing _everyone_ a good life. The trouble is that means sometimes people who don't do any work get to live OK. And that really, really rankles about 20% of the population. We need them to get over it and fast or we're heading for a dark age.
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I hear it tastes like plastic chicken.
Table-ized A.I.
So you're going to help environmentalists take care of capitalism? It is what is directly responsible for both low wages and mass pollution.
Where does all this trash come from? Go look on google for images off trash on beaches. It's NOT the US or 1st world countries. Maybe in some minor places, but not on the whole. Check Asia, polluting there is so common place as to be shocking to true environmentalists. Clean up the 90% first instead of picking on the cleanest countries in the world.
Post to undo moderation error.
Oh, you're already living the dream?
Sort of like you, creimer?
Actually, i digestible plastic may be a good strategy for you to not exceed that 1500 calorie per day target! Consider it!
I am the ruling class, and we are telling you that what you think you're suppose to be doing and what you're suppose to be doing are in your case probably opposites.
Yeah, and also we need to get them over this illusion of private property. Or personal freedom. Marxists such as yourself always think that, in a totalitarian society where people have been properly trained to think only correctly, it will be them that lead society. Guess what, it won't. After Lenin comes Stalin. And after Stalin come some little Stalins. Btw for the history impaired Stalin's profession was highway-robber. Ever think you're making things worse? Ever think why DJT was voted ? Ever think about who was considered as worse than the nazis in '30s Germany so the nazis got votes ?
Think about it this way. Several fish are on their way to extinction due to being over-fished. If we were no long able to consume many of these fish, if they find a way to thrive, they will return to previous population levels in the ocean and we won't be predators any longer which give other species opportunities. At some point either the plastic will hopefully break down and be consumed or our species will die off at which point fish will out last us. If they don't thrive, so long and thanks for all the fish.
Place something witty here
Data taken directly from "Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019", right on schedule.
"If it floats it's food" is a rule that's worked well for a very long time. Maybe longer than photosynthesis.
That's non-standard English. The plural belongs to species, not fish. So, even if fishes were an acceptable plural of fish, which it isn't, it would still be incorrect. You wouldn't say species of cats, species of trees or species of bees, would you? So, why would fish be any different?
This is one of the reasons why you have to be careful about grammar resources, they're usually wrong. Fishes is nonstandard English and your example breaks multiple grammar rules and people aren't going to accept it as correct.
If you don't mind sounding like a moron, then using fishes is fine, otherwise, let's leave it to mobsters threatening to have people sleep with the fishes.
So, why would fish be any different?
As a tropical fish owner, fish refers to one specie and fishes refer to many species.
As a tropical fish owner and a fisherman and a fish eater and an English teacher, the plural form "fish" refers to one or multiple species, and is the most commonly used plural form of the singular word "fish."
The plural form "fishes" is used only in specific contexts, where additional precision is required or desired - it specifically refers to multiple species of fish, but it need not be used if the precision is not warranted.
If I see a trout, a marlin, and a salmon swimming around, it is perfectly acceptable for me to say, "look, there's 3 fish, and they're eating plastic!" If for some reason the fact that there were multiple species of fish that I was observing were *important,* I could say "look, there's 3 fishes, and they're eating plastic!" It would also be perfectly acceptable to say, "look, there's representatives of 3 species of fish, and they're eating plastic!"
There is no rule that says you must "always use fishes to refer to multiple species of fish." The grammarist site you linked to doesn't even say that, it simply says that "fishes" is used in a specific way in a biological context, and in idiomatic expressions such as you'll find in the Godfather - "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." If you're a gangster, or a biologist who requires a specific degree of precision, then by all means, use fishes. But if it's not particularly relevant, or you don't like sounding stilted, "fish" is perfectly acceptable proper English.
With English, as with the perl programming maxim, "there's more than one way to do it." And that's perfectly okay in a language where expressiveness is more important than arbitrary and constant precision.
So, Mr. Grammar Nazi, the word "fish" refers to a single piece of money in the form of coin?
It helps if you don't come across like a fucking idiot when you're trying to correct other people.
AFK, bros, got a handful of fish in my pocket that I need to go feed into the meter, and maybe the soda machine.
"A fish will eat whatever can fit into its mouth." Sounds more like humans to me. Just add "fried" to it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Oysters aren't fish, they're not even vertebrates (nor chordates). And the original technical article (here: https://www.nature.com/article...) did NOT say that the oysters ate plastic, on the contrary, "The Pacific oysters came from aquaculture in urban bays and had anthropogenic debris composed entirely of fibers." (The scientists were not able to ID the fibers; could have been cotton, could have been polyester, or...) In fact, the vast majority of the "anthropogenic" materials the study found in fish caught on the west coast of the US were fibers, not (necessarily) plastic. Plastic was only common in fish bought at a market in Indonesia. (I don't know how much of the seafood we eat comes from Indonesia, nor what fish caught in other places besides Indonesia and the west coast of the US might ingest.)
That said, I do think it would be good to reduced the amount of plastic in the ocean.