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Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World's Deepest Ocean Trench (nationalgeographic.com)
The Mariana Trench -- the deepest point in the ocean -- extends nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong. From a report: A recent study revealed that a plastic bag, like the kind given away at grocery stores, is now the deepest known piece of plastic trash, found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the past 30 years that was recently made public.
But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong.
Why would I, or anyone, think that?
That's the important takeaway here. Even at crushing depths and pressures, gravity will still pull a plastic bag all the way to the bottom.
Probably like most people they commented about it but left it there for someone else to deal with.
taking samples much easier since paper bags would get waterlogged and tear.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Will it take to fill the trench?
But gravity, it's only a theory !
Teach the controversy!
#IntelligentFalling
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(Sorry couldn't resist to make the joke)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Clearly, deep sea explorers think they can chuck their lunch bag out the window anywhere they please.
My personal edification proceeded in the following increments:
1. There is a data base of undersea debris.
2. We have submersibles that can operate and take photos at 36,000' down. And for 30 years?
What I didn't learn is that there are artifacts down there. And regardless of the buoyancy/density of plastic material and how it changes under descent it would make sense it could be dragged down by something it was containing. I am sure you can find human made items down there from hundreds of year ago.
I've been looking all over for my Zune receipt. Is it in that bag?
Table-ized A.I.
Its already a natural landfill. Let's just continue that, it can probably hold all of our plastic waste.
I wonder how long some of this plastic will survive? It's going to be weird when millions of years from now, our layer in the geologic records is marked by plastics, chemicals and a mass extinction.
And this is somehow surprising? That really surprises me!
Sorry, but can someone remind ,e why we use plastic bags every where, that end up all over the place and, now, weâ(TM)re told that almost everything we consume including water has p
Stic molecules and shit in them, fucking up our bodies?
Like... whatever happened to the paper bags we used to get out groceries in? You know, environmentally friendly, renewable, cheap, QUICKLY biodegradable, strong, reusable paper bags.
Whose life hinges on this exactly?
At what point does this not matter? If it were a hypothetical trench at the bottom of the world's deepest ocean? Or if it were on an exoplanet ?
You can find trash everywhere, but in some places you can't even find traces of significance.
Because their delivery service is AWESOME!
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Which story's logo was on that bag?
Its already a natural landfill. Let's just continue that, it can probably hold all of our plastic waste.
If I had mod points right now I'd give that an "insightful". Oceanic trenches ARE the planet's landfill, sucking the seabottom debris under the mantle, to be melted and perhaps eventually released via volcanism.
(They'd be a GREAT place to dispose of radioactive waste if one could be sure it wouldn't get loose before being sucked under.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Earth + Plastic is now scientifically proven. When does George Carlin get his posthumous Nobel Prize?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
the poor, hard working octopus dad is going to get supper home to the kids without a plastic bag? You use them so why should these critters not do as well? :-)
They claimed to have found it by looking at a picture of it. I call BS like the Texas sized garbage patch claim in the Pacific that no one can seem to get a picture of.
There are a few of them, here and there in the what-if section, and two also in the main section, and also there, if you hover with the mouse. I wouldn't be surpised if others appear, however: it is such a deep argument, after all.
Keep looking for other "modern" stuff, if it's more than 5000 y old then you're in business!
Wait until they find the used condoms I left on the Moon, bitches!
5 species of sea slugs have, after review of their photographs, been reclassified as condoms.
Gravity? Oh, so THAT'Ss why notes in bottles are found so rarely: despite the fact that they float, gravity pulls them down...sigh...morons.
Accidentally dropped it overboard. Had a 6 pack of diet Coke (plastic bottles) and a styrofoam pod of humpback whale sushi.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Now if we could just convince all the lawyers and politicians to get down there we'd be on our way to a better world.
The video in the linked article, on the National Geographic web site, does NOT show a plastic bag. It shows a diver collecting 2L plastic soda bottles, but no plastic bag. (Except for the very large sample collection bag that he brought.)
The diver appears to be using conventional SCUBA gear. Can you even dive in the Mariana Trench that way? He's in a regular wet suit, bare handed, etc. I thought that going deeper than about 200 feet required more sophisticated gear. And I thought you could only go about 2,000 feet down with that special gear. This cannot possibly be a video of someone diving 38,000 feet down. I always thought you needed to be in a super-high-pressure submarine to go down there.
We used to use paper bags for groceries, but the left hated them and wanted them replaced. They complained that those bags represented murdered trees, and their consumer advocates argued that those bags were a health risk because they absorbed bacteria from things like juices leaking from packages of meat.
When the stores offered the new thin, strong plastic grocery bags, everybody went nuts for them. The stores loved them because they ware far more compact to store, and easier to dispense and cheaper to stock. Consumers loved them because they seemed cleaner, were lighter, did not go mushy when they got wet and even were translucent allowing the user to see the contents a bit. The tree huggers were happy about all the forests they thought they had saved.
Like so many "reforms" the left pushes in one year, they eventually became the very thin the left came to hate years later.
Hey!, you kids! git offa my lawn! (and while you're at it, stop demanding I change and then later complaining that the change YOU demanded needs to be changed) - An old geezer geek who remembers
It was almost certainly Asian in origin. This is partly because of the location, but also because most of the plastic in the Pacific is from Asian countries. It's simply the case that North America and Europe developed and implemented much stricter environmental policies much earlier, but also for cultural reasons.
Showing the bag would likely confirm this, and thus the fear at a politically correct outfit like NatGeo that it would reenforce "bigoted" stereotypes. Similar to the way that the American media love to show the bodies of Muslims killed by the US in war, but have never show the American people the bodies of any of the 9-11 victims, which several journalists admitted over a decade ago was a consensus position of journalists to avoid inflaming any "islamophobic" tendencies in the American populace.
It's run by a Jewess, who hates white people. Every single issue has articles about how wonderful 'diversity' is (i.e. flooding white countries, and ONLY white countries, with millions of unwanted non-white immigrants every year), and how hard done by non-whites are - even though THEY still have their own (admittedly shithole) countries to go back to, whereas white people don't have our own countries any more! Sound like genocide much to you?
If being a 'minority' is so awful, then obviously wishing white people to become minorities in THEIR OWN COUNTRIES is a bad thing, is it not?
I do not like using plastic bags but not because of environmental concerns with their disposal; I prefer paper bags because I hate trees.
When I was young lad, as a part of Tikkun Olam, when we would stop alongside the road or after leaving a camping site, our parents required us to police the area in order to remove (1) all evidence of our having been there; and (2) a majority of evidence by the occupation of others. Even today I police my yard, street, local parks, etc. -- even as an old man. Given that ecology minded folks seem to think that the problem is with a government, corporation, or anyone else; I should not be surprised if we find cigarette butts and bear cans on Pluto. Furthermore, my wife and I are foodies. We produce 1/4 the amount of trash that our neighbors (with the same number of people in the home) do. Personal responsibility will clean a world -- not bigger government or increased tax dollars. I begin to wonder if common sense has become a modern superpower.
The one they "fucked in the drivethru" out of?