Ocean Trash

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This is sad. How many species of fish, birds and other animals and even plant life that are dependent on the oceans would get affected by this? Not only does it affect the oceans, like the video says, even the rivers are affected by the pollution.

Tons of small fishes get killed because people throw soda cans irresponsibly in the ocean. We think, once we throw it in the ocean, no one will know.

Wow. That is insane. Do you guys think the 'experts' are correct in that the mess is already too big to clean up?

Originally Posted by greendesigner

Wow. That is insane. Do you guys think the 'experts' are correct in that the mess is already too big to clean up?

There are actually two in the North Pacific, one between Hawaii and California and another between Hawaii and Japan. There is another in the South Pacific, One in the North Atlantic, one in the South Atlantic and one in the Indian Ocean. It is estimated that there are 46,ooo pieces of trash per square mile of ocean, mostly concentrated in these cyclical currents. Most comes from island nations and coastal areas that have run out of room for overpopulation's trash. A lot of the plastic has toxic breakdown products and some takes 50K years to break down! The oceans were looked at as infinite dumping areas, and there are also over 100 huge estuary dead zones from human pollution. Some parts have warmed enough to give off methane, and that will increase in a self sustained reaction to the initial warming by the huge amount of CO2 produced by humans over tha past 150 years. A stinking polluted soup, thanks to overpopulation, stupidity and greed.

First, all oceanic dumping and near shore, or near rivers to the oceans, dumping should cease by international law. Cleanup should be subsidized by all the governments of countries in or bordering oceans, with preference given to sailing vessels doing the cleanup and on board separation of plastic types. Fines to the counties of origin, where determinable, should be made to help pay for the cleanup.
Also, strict laws should be made in those countries involved, to reduce population through education, family planning clinics, free contraceptives and sterilizations, heavy taxation on having more than one child, and permits required with physical and means tests to have a child---violators would face severe penalties.
It is doubtful that such laws would be enacted in enough countries, or that international agreements of sufficient strength and scope would be made. So the oceans will continue to have larger areas of trash, larger and more estuary dead zones, more acidity from CO2 and acid rain, more methane release from warming, and complete fisheries depletion by 2050. The natural rate for eventual cleanup of the oceans will take from many thousands to a few million years.

IS it possible for the chemicals in the plastic to work their way up the food chain and into us?

Yes, the higher up the food chain to the fish we eat have higher concentrations of mercury, and a number of other toxic breakdown products of plastic. In addition to 7 oceanic trash gyres, there are a hundred or more estuary dead zones. The one off the Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico, this year, 2011, is the size of Lake Erie, bigger than ever.
A report on the oceans says the rates of acidification effects from atmospheric HGHGs, over-fishing, trash, and heavy metals pollution, are all much higher than expected and accelerating in effects faster than worst case scenarios. They report the next big extinction will be oceanic species.

Pages 5-7 are the facts, and further on a few pages of solutions and recommendations;
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/1906_IPSO-LONG.pdf