Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I read a paper today that said that there are no less than 270,000,000 kilograms of plastic in the ocean, which is about half a billion pounds plus of plastic. So … is this a big number or a small number?
The story is at the Guardian, and they’ve illustrated it with the following picture:
Regarding the story, as usual the Guardian doesn’t disappoint—it hypes the danger of the half-billion pounds of plastic. Hey, good news doesn’t sell newspapers, so I can’t fault them. In any case, they say:
More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world’s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found.
Now, I suppose that the good folks at the Grauniad think that with their picture they are showing the “damage throughout the food chain” that they claim plastics cause in the ocean … but look at the picture and think about it for a moment.
Does it look like a) that chunk of plastic is inimical to sea life … or does it look like b) that chunk of plastic is acting a substrate upon which abundant sea life is living and serving as fish food? Call me crazy but I’m going for Choice b), you can see the little striped fish chowing down. Now I know that not all plastic is good for sea life … but that plastic certainly is.
However, I started out with the question about whether 270,000,000 kilogrammes is a big number or a small number. Looking at the extent of the ocean gives us a very different picture … because it turns out that the 270,000,000 kilograms of plastic works out to 200 grams of plastic per cubic kilometer of the ocean. Or in old-school measurements, that’s just under two pounds of plastic per cubic mile of seawater. (Some commenters have noted that most of the debris is at or near the surface, so if you prefer, it’s about 900 grams of plastic per square kilometer of ocean surface.)
Now, I’m willing to agree that there are some kinds of plastic that are likely inimical to sealife. Nylon fishing nets that have been lost and gone adrift, for example, continue to kill fish. But the fish aren’t wasted, they’re eaten in turn by a combination of larger and smaller fish until the net washes ashore. So the nets are just another predator. Not saying I like that, I don’t, particularly when they catch whales and other sea mammals … but it’s not the end of the ocean.
And as for the other small pieces of random plastic … well, I just can’t get all that passionate about the dangers of 200 grams of plastic for every BILLION tonnes of sea water, or if you prefer, the dangers of 900 grams of plastic for every square kilometre of ocean surface (1 cubic km = one billion tonnes).
Now, I can hear you thinking, but Willis, what about the great Pacific Gyre, where the plastic collects? First, it’s not like most people think, where you could walk on the plastic and there are islands and such. The density is much higher than the global average, but it’s still only about 2-3 kg per cubic kilometre, or about 5 kg/square km.
However, as a long-time fisherman, I’d bet big money that there is MORE sea life in the Gyre than in equivalent blue-water ocean near the Gyre. The blue water is a desert, in part because there’s nothing for life to grow on. Many kinds of sea life require a “substrate”, something solid to attach to so it can grow. As a result, anything that floats, and I mean anything, will rapidly attract life, just as in the Guardian’s “scary” picture above.
In closing, I don’t like plastic in the ocean, and I’m very, very conscious about it when I’m at sea. I never throw plastic into the ocean. However, as an ocean problem, it’s way, way below things like overfishing and pollution. Those are the real dangers, not a couple hundred grams of plastic in each billion tons of sea water. That’s a small number.
Best to all,
w.
PS—If you disagree with someone, please QUOTE THEIR EXACT WORDS so everyone can be clear just what your objection might be.
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Should I believe “269,000 tonnes” or “7,000 to 35,000” tons?
In July of this year “an around-the-world cruise by a research ship that towed a mesh net at 141 sites, as well as other studies. Researchers estimated the total amount of floating plastic debris in open ocean at 7,000 to 35,000 tons.”
http://en.mercopress.com/2014/07/01/floating-plastic-junk-widely-spread-on-world-oceans-but-doubts-about-how-much
269,000 tonnes has all the traditional accuracy of The Guardian’s reporting. All other so-called “sources” should be banned. The numbers are settled.
Thanks, Willis, for the “balanced” part that has been completely abandoned by print and broadcast journalism.
Physicist: There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster
The terrible toll from Japan’s tsunami came from the wave, not radiation
http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/physicist-there-was-no-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
> Physicist: There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster
That’s true enough. But there is a complex and expensive clean up problem and a displaced population issue that is due to the failure of the facilities at the plant. What bothers me is that it was probably avoidable. When the Fukushima-daiichi plant was designed, it was thought (incorrectly) that the largest likely earthquake would be about that of the great Kanto earthquake of 1923 that pretty much flattened the Tokyo-Yokohama area — magnitude 7.9. That’s what Fukushima was designed for and AFAICS, it’d probably have handled a magnitude 8.0 quake and the associated tsunami without problem.
But by 1985 at the latest, it had become clear that substantially stronger quakes were possible at the plate boundaries off the coast of Honshu. The Fukushima facility was never upgraded to reflect that knowledge. Would an upgrade have prevented all damage to the plant? I have no idea. But I think it would have probably helped a lot.
The displaced population is mostly because of rabid radiophobia, most of the evacuated areas did not need to be evacuated.
The earthquake did little damage to the facility, it was the tsunami combined with poor placement of back-up generators and electrical lines that lead to the meltdowns.
ddpalmer
ddpalmer December 12, 2014 at 2:57 am
Dunno ’bout that.
There are reports that unit 1 was smoking already before the tsunami hit, and radiation alarms were going off, according to documents supplied by TEPCO.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/earthquake-may-have-damaged-reactor-before-tsunami-20110519-1ev1m.html#ixzz2OalwauKf
More here includes worker reports of buckling, bursting pipes prior to tsunami:
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?page_id=10166
“Does it look like a) that chunk of plastic is inimical to sea life … or does it look like b) that chunk of plastic is acting a substrate upon which abundant sea life is living and serving as fish food? Call me crazy but I’m going for Choice b), you can see the little striped fish chowing down. Now I know that not all plastic is good for sea life … but that plastic certainly is.”
“Now, I’m willing to agree that there are some kinds of plastic that are likely inimical to sealife. Nylon fishing nets that have been lost and gone adrift, for example, continue to kill fish.”
Go to the Guardian story and you can get a higher res version of the picture. That chunk of plastic that is “is acting a substrate upon which abundant sea life is living and serving as fish food” very much appears to be a fragment of nylon fishing net, so your comment that “Nylon fishing nets that have been lost and gone adrift, for example, continue to kill fish.” is clearly not universally true.
Plastic in the ocean is as distressing as any trash you see laying about. For poor societies the oceans are a cost effective method of disposal. Only wealthy societies can afford recycling and proper disposal of waste. If the greens have their way, hindering prosperity in the poorer parts of the world, we’ll never see cleaner oceans.
Reblogged this on SiriusCoffee and commented:
You too can combat global hysteria!
Fly over the ocean East of NYC sometimes and see the many garbage ships dumping in the Atlantic for a real eye opener. Real recycling going on there.
So, some patches of flotsam have been found in the Horse Latitudes, exactly where you would expect such patches. So, based on such encounters, someone concluded that the Horse Latitudes have some ungodly amount of flotsam, essentially an extrapolation. I seriously doubt anyone has mapped this explicitly and done an all inclusive survey. No one really knows how much flotsam is really out there and even “pure research” orgs need to allocate their vessels and satellites for higher priority tasks.
Just for the heck of it.
Its probably in the Granuid but I haven’t seen it reported anywhere as yet until this morning’s ” Australian” [ Fri 12th Dec. ]
The “Guardian’s” Alan Rushburger News and Media Editor for the last 20 years will step down to become the Guardian’s funder, “The Scott Trust ” Chairman.
Globally The Guardian posted a loss of 30.6 million pounds for the year ending March 30th. [AUD $57.8 million ]
Guardian Australia posted a loss of $7.5 million loss on sales revenues of $3.79 million;
Editors in chief aren’t exactly renown for their reticence in making a personal impact when and where at all possible.
A new editor invariably likes to shift a lot of things around in any news sheet he / she might get the chance to edit.
So we can expect some changes in the Guardians news reporting whether for good or bad or for better or for worse, we will just have to wait and see.
Not that it can get much worse from the Guardian’s present execrable exaggeration of anything that looks like it might arouse a further elevating of emotional environmentalism regardless of the actual facts of the case.
Every two years a research vessel does transects of the Pacific Gyre. First, there is no floating island the size of Rhode Island in the center. There is no island of any size; there simple is no aggregation at all. Second, the most recent such research trip had to trawl for longer than usual to gather enough pieces of plastic to be able to do a statistical treatment. Third, they report that the amount of plastic has been creasing exponentially for decades, dwindling away as countries and ships learn how not to lose their trash in the sea. Fourth, there is an real island in the Pacific gyre that indeed does have plastic on its shores. The plastic is largely little tiny pieces, similar to sand, which means that the plastic is being churned and ground into tiny pieces that degrade that much faster. It is indeed going away.
Years ago, with the invention of formica counter tops, the prediction was that someday we would be drowning in formica waste, as it would not break down. Only two decades later there were at least two strains of fungus that had learned to eat formica. Nature truly does not like to waste a perfectly good food source.
Plastics at sea perform two major functions besides serving as useful habitats for marine life. They can serve as a food source as bacteria and fungi break them down, and some kinds of plastic absorb toxins from the water and are broken down over time by solar light and UV radiation.
I seriously believe that the stated amount of plastic in the paper is a gross over-estimate, as the worst pollution is concentrated near the shorelines of undeveloped countries. I am also sure that the estimate required some rampant extrapolation, which would be perfectly in keeping with such alarmist material. It is unlikely to be an under-estimate; what would be the alarm in that?
[“decreasing exponentially” not “creasing exponentially”? .mod]
Nice post – thank you!
“because it turns out that the 270,000,000 kilograms of plastic works out to 200 grams of plastic per cubic kilometer of the ocean. Or in old-school measurements, that’s just under two pounds of plastic per cubic mile of seawater.”
I assume that most of the plastic is less dense than water since an annoying amount seems to end up littering beaches, and really dense material is surely going to end up on the bottom. So I think probably we should be talking in terms of plastic per unit area, not volume. That would be 270,000 metric tonnes distributed over 361 million square kilometers of ocean surface or about 748 grams per square kilometer. Or about 1.65lb per square kilometer. Is that annoying? It annoys me and probably most readers. Is it a matter for real concern? Probably not. Are we all going to die because of it? I doubt it.
I say we just go full-on archaic and double up on all the consonants: kkilloggrrammss, ttonness, yess my preciousssss, we likesss itttt.
I assume you are referring to the nn in tonnes. It’s the conventional way to distinguish between English tons (2000 lb) and metric tonnes (1000kg = 2205lb).
Those are American tons or short tons, English tons (Imperial measure) are 2240lbs, their use in the US is limited to the displacement of ships.
I recall a conversation with a Green friend who waxed animated about “Garbage Island” in the Pacific. I asked him why we never see a photograph of Garbage Island, and ventured the opinion that it was probably not actually an island in the sense of being something you could stand on, or even see. He told me I was quite wrong. I suggested we google to settle the matter. After we did so, he was gracious enough to admit I was right.
If it was not for the CO2 religion this would not be an issue. A small firm near here produces a plasma furnace that burns the stuff producing no toxins. I looked at their data and found that a ship could harvest the stuff totally self powered from what it collects and have 80% left over for base station combustion based on the density quoted at the collection areas divided by ten for greenwashing of the image of industry and exaggeration of fossil fuel problems.
Large holes in your logic. First, small ingestible plastic is the biggest issue. I would give a three year old a plastic bottle but only with out the cap. Only talking about large pieces is somewhat of a straw man argument.
Second, how many cubic meters of sea water goes through a fish’s gills in its lifetime? This narrows the numbers. Not necessarily the conclusion.
ironargonaut December 12, 2014 at 3:45 pm
Sorry, I’m in mystery here—what makes you think I’m only talking about the large pieces?
Not sure why that number is relevant.
iron, if you have evidence that the “small ingestible plastic” is a problem in the ocean, then please cite it. As a lifelong sailor, surfer, commercial and sport fisherman, and commercial and sport diver, I’m always willing to learn more about the ocean.
All the best to you,
w.
Because you refer to plastic that is large enough for organisms to attach to. Are you suggesting it is not a problem for marine animals to ingest nonbiodegrable objects?
“plastic soda rings, “baggies,” styrofoam particles and plastic pellets are often mistaken by sea turtles as authentic food. Clogging their intestines, and missing out on vital nutrients, the turtles starve to death. Seabirds undergo a similar ordeal, mistaking the pellets for fish eggs, small crab and other prey, sometimes even feeding the pellets to their young. Despite the fact that only 0.05% of plastic pieces from surface waters are pellets, they comprise about 70% of the plastic eaten by seabirds. These small plastic particles have been found in the stomachs of 63 of the world’s approximately 250 species of seabirds”
http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html
Five minutes on google to validate what my logic.
Iron, while your claim involves the claimed dangers of the ingestion of plastic, the main thrust of the popular report that you cited involves uncited claims about entanglement, viz:
I could find nothing from the NMML giving a number of 40,000 seals killed per year, and I didn’t believe a word of it the moment I read it, in part because the kind of seals is not stated, and in part because the number is just too high. I did find this study, which says:
These are fur seals, and the population is on the order of 600,000. There was no subgroup which was more than 0.23%, with an average of about a tenth of a percent or so … which is about 600 per year. I’m sorry, but disease and predators kill more fur seals than that by far. The mortality among adult males is about 38% per year, and you think we should worry about a tenth of a percent per year? Not gonna happen.
Nor can I find anyone blaming seal decline on entanglement except your source, some unknown woman who strongly implies it but is careful not to state it outright, providing total deniability … I hate that kind of mealy-mouthing. Instead, I find things like this (emphasis mine)
Lack of prey and predation by whales … nothing about entanglement. Then there’s this:
Now, recall that I specifically spoke about entanglement in the head post … in any case, none of the data I can find supports anything near “40,000 seals a year”. So what you have posted a link to is just some lady’s unregulated alarmism …
And regarding the ingestion of plastic, the only thing your citation says is the part you quoted, viz:
Sorry, but ingesting plastic particles and pellets wasn’t even mentioned as causing a single death … all they said was it was not unusual to find plastic particles and pellets in bird’s stomachs. So what? For most creatures (including humans), small plastic particles just pass through the digestive tract (or in the case of birds, are regurgitated).
You go on to say:
Well, it only took me about fifteen minutes to demolish your claims using actual scientific studies rather than the predigested pap that seems to impress you… sorry, but uncited, unsourced articles in the popular press don’t carry any weight here. This is a scientific site, and we’ve seen thousands of false claims in the popular press about a host of subjects. You’re gonna have to up your game, my friend. Don’t get me wrong, I think you can up your game … but so far it’s just empty claims.
And in any case, here you are claiming that your citation backs up your claim about deaths from creatures eating plastic … and other than the problems for turtles, where as I’ve already discussed it causes some deaths, it doesn’t mention even one death from small particles or from birds eating plastic. Not one. Not saying there aren’t any … just saying your citation said nothing about them.
Remember that I didn’t say I approved of throwing plastic in the ocean, quite the opposite. I dislike it greatly and don’t do it myself. What I said was that while plastic is a problem, it was undeserving of the hype surrounding the recent article because compared to things like overfishing, reef destruction, and pollution, it is a very minor issue.
w.
Um, if I did the math right, that 5 Trillion pieces to make up 270 Billion grams has 270 / 5000 grams per piece. I make that about 5 / 100 or 1/20 gram per piece. We’re talking grit or dust here. On average…
The churning waves of the oceans make an excellent if somewhat slow grinder.
While we are on the subject, it is worth tracing back the source of the original alarmist claims about how plastics in the sea were allegedly wiping out millions of sea dwelling creatures and birds. It is one of the Great Lies which has underpinned spurious bans on plastic shopping bags all over the world.
Google being what (and who) it is, I can’t find the references just now. It is the kind of thing that they put at 3,583 on their list. But, the whole “plastics are murderers” meme was based on a single study of Canadian fishing industry waste products. The researchers extrapolated from bits of nets and other debris of the fishing industry in and around a single site (somewhere around Newfoundland, perhaps, but please correct me) that this represented the whole world.
From then on, this extraordinary upside-down pyramid of bizzare and dopey measures like banning plastic shopping bags was constructed, all over the world.
I have tracked this reference down at least twice before, but stupidly have not saved it. It exists, but this old broad is a bit busy just now. Plus, I can’t believe that it hasn’t already been bannered all over the sceptic blogs, which seem to be more interested in arcania than common sense a lot of the time.
As Willis has pointed out, there is no “island of plastic.” I cannot tell you how many times, when presented with this absurd proposition, I have asked for things like photographs or other evidence, and been excoriated for it.
Willis, if you have time, trace back the whole history of murderous plastic in the sea, and domestic shopping bags. It is one of the great unexamined con jobs. It all began (and pretty much ended) with a single study of washed up fishing equipment in Canada decades ago.
Here you go johanna:
“The name “Pacific Garbage Patch” has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter —akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. While higher concentrations of litter items can be found in this area, along with other debris such as derelict fishing nets, much of the debris is actually small pieces of floating plastic that are not immediately evident to the naked eye.
The debris is continuously mixed by wind and wave action and widely dispersed both over huge surface areas and throughout the top portion of the water column. It is possible to sail through the “garbage patch” area and see very little or no debris on the water’s surface. It is also difficult to estimate the size of these “patches,” because the borders and content constantly change with ocean currents and winds. Regardless of the exact size, mass, and location of the “garbage patch,” manmade debris does not belong in our oceans and waterways and must be addressed.”
source: NOAA; another WUWT poster left the link some time ago.
If shopping bags are banned, this will force people to buy plastic bags to put their trash in.
Thanks, Zeke, but the thing really want to find is the story of the single Canadian study which started the whole thing off. I think it was published in a British newspaper some years ago.
Bottom line is, the entire edifice of “millions of sea critters murdered by plastic every year” was based on one study of fishing gear washed up on the coast somewhere in Canada. To my knowledge, there are absolutely so empirical studies on which to base this claim – just lots of subsequent modelling.
so = no. Fat fingers today.
johanna says, “the thing really want to find is the story of the single Canadian study which started the whole thing off.”
Okay I went and checked a couple of off-line sources to help, but plastic is not mentioned specifically in the books I have because they focus on chemicals.
I have found an original MIT paper written for the UN that mention CO2, but they admitted then in the 80’s that there was not enough data to compare past and present. It was a theory without a cause at first; just a ghost suspended with no materiality.
I also found out that the real goal of the “Sustainability” scientific paradigm is not for people to drive electric cars, but “pedal-power.” Lester R Brown, State of the World 1990.
Well said!
(Meant for Joanna, but Zeke gets a nod for posting without a sneering reference to the Baby Boomers.)
Thank you, Steve P. I was really sitting on my hands!
Second what Steve P said.
Costly solutions to non-problems are a specialty of the Greens.
rooter December 13, 2014 at 10:32 am Edit
I read it, my friend. Gosh … you mean the results might possibly be twice that, and there might be as much as 2 kg per square km? Be still my beating heart. And in fact, their calculations do include plastic which is below the surface, as they explicitly state in the study.
Dear heavens, I ALREADY CORRECTED IT BEFORE YOU OFFERED YOUR FIRST COMMENT! In the units you prefer, it’s 900 grams per square km. as I said before you started your quixotic quest.
Then when you didn’t notice that I’d restated it in your preferred format, I told you I corrected it. Are you really so concerned that you can’t click on a link?
Perhaps so, perhaps not … but then one of us gets a million page views per year and has peer-reviewed articles in the scientific journals, and the other of us just bites people’s ankles. Coincidence? … perhaps.
w.
Page views on Anthony’s site ?
Who is doing the heavy lifting ?
Thanks for the comment, u.k. However, if you think simply putting a post up on this site guarantees page views, think again …
w.
It weren’t nuthin, not my place anyway.
Nope Willis. You have not corrected your big error. Do yourself a service. Read what you have written:
“However, I started out with the question about whether 270,000,000 kilogrammes is a big number or a small number. Looking at the extent of the ocean gives us a very different picture … because it turns out that the 270,000,000 kilograms of plastic works out to 200 grams of plastic per cubic kilometer of the ocean.”
And:
“And as for the other small pieces of random plastic … well, I just can’t get all that passionate about the dangers of 200 grams of plastic for every BILLION tonnes of sea water (1 cubic km = one billion tonnes).”
Not corrected.
Are such errors embarrising for you Willis? Perhaps you are trying to reduce the traction for this blog. And for yourself.
[How are you converting units? One gigatonne is one billion metric tonnes ( 1 Gt = 1 x 10^9 tonnes) .. One gigatonne of water has a volume of one billion cubic meters, or one cubic kilometer. (1 Gt water ≡ 1 km³)”
1 GT = 1 gigaton
= 109 tons (U.S. tons or “short tons,” each 907.185 kg or 2000 lbs)
1 Gt = 1 gigatonne
= 109 tonnes (metric tons, each 1000 kg or 2204.62 lbs)
= 1012 kg
= 1.1023 GT
= the mass of 1 cubic kilometer of fresh water
= the mass of 1.091 cubic km of ice
Ice has a density of about 0.9167
Seawater has a density of about 1.027 .mod]
Thanks, rooter. I see you desired that I corrected it in the head post, rather than in the comments, which you might have said and saved us all a heap of your unpleasantness. Done. Anything else?
I do have to laugh at the idea of you advising anyone about gaining traction, however …
Regards,
w.
So, how do you re-tension those 345,000 volt hi-tension wires when they break in a corner ?
I just got to see it up close and personal, it’s better than football.
They were good about putting up with my inane conversation.(six trucks and maybe 20 workers).
Nothing like block and tackle anchored to the base of a tower, and the tow hitch of a truck of sufficient power to make it work (I guess).
Willis you state “iron, if you have evidence that the “small ingestible plastic” is a problem in the ocean, then please cite it. As a lifelong sailor, surfer, commercial and sport fisherman, and commercial and sport diver, I’m always willing to learn more about the ocean.
All the best to you,”
So, I did as you asked. And your response you spend several paragraphs arguing with yourself about entanglement? Huh? When you get around to the actual subject.
“Well, it only took me about fifteen minutes to demolish your claims using actual scientific studies rather than the predigested pap that seems to impress you… sorry, but uncited, unsourced articles in the popular press don’t carry any weight here. This is a scientific site, and we’ve seen thousands of false claims in the popular press about a host of subjects. You’re gonna have to up your game, my friend. Don’t get me wrong, I think you can up your game … but so far it’s just empty claims.
And in any case, here you are claiming that your citation backs up your claim about deaths from creatures eating plastic … and other than the problems for turtles, where as I’ve already discussed it causes some deaths, it doesn’t mention even one death from small particles or from birds eating plastic. Not one. Not saying there aren’t any … just saying your citation said nothing about them.”
Apparently, you aren’t really willing to learn more. Just pretend it for a bit until someone challenges you then start in with the attacks. Where the hell did I “claim about deaths from creatures eating plastic” Please site the specific words yada yada. I simply stated logically small ingestible pieces of plastic are more of a concern then larger pieces. I even pointed out the my google search was cursory, but I apparently insulted Mr. know it all and therefore must be raked over the coals so he can show his superior intellect.
Your specious strawman tactics may work for you but they are very pathetic. Let’s look at one.
“it only took me about fifteen minutes to demolish your claims using actual scientific studies”
Please point me to the “actual scientific studies” you mentioned, not new ones, that studied small ingestible plastics, not the strawman entanglement argument you made up. Perhaps you should up your game.
Next up “here you are claiming that your citation backs up your claim about deaths from creatures eating plastic” I never made any such claim. I never claimed the author was right, valid, or etc… I said it backed up my logic, along with the multiple other links that come up when you search google. I even was looking at one link that was a scientific gathering to discuss this issue. You know how to use google, and since you care I am sure you have already done that. You just can’t admit that you may have made a logical error in arguing about entanglement and larger pieces.
Oh and by the way I didn’t know that some .edu site I had never heard of until I did the search was “uncited, unsourced articles in the popular press”, I guess it may be popular and I just don’t know it, but unsourced? there’s this thing at the bottom, I think they call it a link, it says “bibliography”, but hey Mr. Know It All says I’m impressed easily by predigested pap and I don’t have a good game so what do I know.
You seem to think acting childish is upping ones game, so perhaps I can do that too.
You should also note, I never even claimed the conclusion of your article was wrong.
All the best to you
ironargonaut December 16, 2014 at 12:48 am
iron, I’m always willing to learn more. Perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought that when you said that
that you were talking about deaths from ingesting small plastic pieces being a major problem.
If not, what were you talking about, and where is your evidence? Because the cite you gave only said:
However, seabirds eat a lot of indigestible things, including the natural plastic “pens” of squids … which in many cases they just regurgitate.
You haven’t provided any evidence that eating small plastic pieces makes sea creatures die, and you haven’t provided any evidence that eating small plastic pieces makes sea creatures sick … which is why I said you need to up your game.
Unless once again I have misunderstood you, which is possible …
Now, if you’d like an example of scientific evidence, here’s some (emphasis mine):
SOURCE: NOAA
Which is what I said. Plastic in the ocean is a problem, and I dislike it greatly. However, it’s not the end of the ocean. It’s not what it’s hyped up to be. It’s not a significant problem compared to things like pollution and overfishing.
Note the difference between the scientific study results and the quote from your citation, which comprised everything your citation said about small plastic particles.
My best regards to you,
w.
I would imagine bottom feeding fish, would have a system to expel non-digestible sand etc. so plastic should also be expelled. Do you know of any data to suggest that other fish are or are not effected by small plastic pieces? Logically to me this would be a larger problem then large chunks of plastic. A 1kg hunk of plastic in 1km^2 of ocean surface is less concerning then 1000 1gram pieces floating in the same 1km^2 of ocean. This is what I am trying to convey. Do I have data to back it up? No. Logically I can see no reason to assume other wise.
You have already shown why in your opinion why large chunks of plastic are not necessarily a super killer. I tend to agree with your logic on this. I just think we would be intellectually dishonest if we don’t discuss what impact small plastics may have.
You won’t get any argument out of me that almost every problem is overhyped. Which is sad because when real issues arise the reflex is to assume it is overhyped.
Real pollution such as plastic in the ocean sucks. If you are like me there is nothing more disgusting then hiking across a mountain meadow and seeing garbage, or garbage on a beautiful beach. How many superfund sites could have been cleaned up with the billions wasted on AGW.
I honestly don’t think our thinking is that different.
Best regards,
Ironargonaut
Thanks for your kind reply, ironargonaut. I agree that I “don’t think our thinking is that different”. Here’s my deal. I’m a sailor and a diver and a commercial fisherman. I’m likely one of the few people reading this thread who’s ever had the fun of untangling a sea lion from a fishing net (protip—they have big sharp teeth, and their breath absolutely reeks, so work carefully from upwind).
And I, like you, think that plastic in the ocean sucks.
As to whether the fish have a way to get rid of unwanted small bits of indigestible stuff, I have to assume so, or they would have died long ago. There’s plenty of small bits of natural stuff that float around in the ocean and some would be consumed by various fish. Hang on … OK, here’s an interesting article on the subject.
Always more to learn,
All the best,
w.
Not sure if would apply to fish, but I had a dog that occasionally would eat pieces of “things” that passed through its digestive system but parts of which were still hanging out of its butt after a poop.
I believed the next digestive movement would have fixed the problem, but the dog wasn’t sure (you could tell by its demeanor, tail down and not its happy self), so I would pull out offending material, and the dog would instantly revert to his happy self.