[HN Gopher] Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plas...
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Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans
(2021)
Author : sweetheart
Score : 72 points
Date : 2022-08-09 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.org)
| epistasis wrote:
| To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste,
| versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre...
|
| Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the
| bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics
| should be far more concerning to people.
|
| It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a
| life without a car, and people think you are weird, and pass laws
| preventing you from building a community that is accessible
| without a car (at least in the US). And that's before we get to
| the violent deaths caused by car crashes, or the wheezing deaths
| caused by COPD, or the quality years of life reduced by asthma
| from cars...
| kohanz wrote:
| I'm not sure if it was your intent, but that comparison makes
| the fishing output seem even more outsized to me, given the
| size of the auto industry.
| [deleted]
| notch656a wrote:
| Do you need recommendations on places in the US you can work in
| tech without a car and still enjoy the community? Because I can
| speak from many years of experience, it's not a difficult life
| to setup for yourself.
| [deleted]
| zonotope wrote:
| I'd love to hear these recommendations. I know you thrive
| without a car in New York and Boston, but I would love to
| hear about other places like that in the US.
| bsedlm wrote:
| by this point, being able to eat (like in crimes of the future),
| or at the least, resist eating plastics and other toxic
| ubiquitous substances (PFAS) seems like the most viable strategy.
| taeric wrote:
| Lest the headline not be obvious, this is industrial fishing
| gear.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Just to expand for those who haven't read the article - These
| types of nets are specifically designed to catch and trap sea
| life, so cause outsized damage to ecosystems than their
| size/weight/volume might suggest.
|
| The images you might see of a turtle with a 6-pack ring around
| a flipper are nothing compared to the damage a torn off chunk
| of a trawler's net might cause.
| painted-now wrote:
| This was also my key takeaway from watching "Seaspiracy" on
| Netflix
| csmpltn wrote:
| What about boats with fiberglass hulls?
| picture wrote:
| Hulls of boats generally don't just go missing or left behind.
| And, the fiberglass doesn't cause as much damage as high
| surface area fishing nets. I remember reading that the paint
| can be an issue though, as there are added particles to get the
| aesthetic glimmer that will get into the water over time
| speed_spread wrote:
| Anti-fouling paints applied to hulls contain organometallic
| chemicals that are, by design, toxic to marine life. This is
| to prevent algae and molusk to attach to the hull, slowing
| the boat over time and requiring extensive cleanup. You can
| imagine the effect these paints have when they chip off.
| notch656a wrote:
| Anti-fouling paint chipping off seems better than going
| through 3x as many hulls after they
| delaminate/rust/disintegrate and become unsalvageable,
| tossed into the ocean by 3rd world vessel scrappers.
| dark-star wrote:
| It is so obvious, and has been known for years, yet the EU banned
| plastic straws because of the waste in the oceans, so now every
| drink tastes like a schoolbook. Well done EU...
| chefandy wrote:
| If only there was a way to convey liquids from handheld
| containers to your mouth without using a little tube!
| anm89 wrote:
| This sounds pretty complicated
| RajT88 wrote:
| Sippy cups are underrated.
| [deleted]
| ksaj wrote:
| There are starch-based "plastic" utensils that look/feel like a
| slightly more matte version of the plastic most people are used
| to. The school my partner works at used them as a trial for a
| year. They had straws, spoons, forks, knives and plates made
| from it. The problem is they are more expensive than regular
| plastic or paper/cardboard, and people in general seem to be
| unwilling to pay that bit extra to keep non-biodegradable waste
| down. So everyone ends up with paper-based straws, etc, or
| sticking with plastics instead.
|
| In this case, they literally get what they pay for, because
| after the trial, they're complaining about all the paper
| products instead of budgeting to continue with the starch-based
| solution that was so very much better.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I wonder how they break down outside of a compost
| environment? My company uses "compostable" plastics which
| feel like normal plastic. I've used the same compostable
| clear plastic cup for months on end and it isn't showing any
| signs of degradation. I suspect it would break down in a
| proper compost pile(high temps and such) but outside of that
| environment it seems as durable as traditional plastic.
| Hopefully in an environment like the ocean it would be
| susceptible to bacteria and fungi but I wonder if that is
| sufficient.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Our local composting company explicitly excludes
| compostable utensils and food containers. Compostable
| doesn't mean biodegradable. For example, compostable
| cardboard food containers may be coated with perfluoro
| compounds to prevent liquids from soaking into the
| cardboard. These don't biodegrade.
| ksaj wrote:
| Yes, that also goes for paper cups with the wax coating.
| They don't biodegrade and they aren't recyclable because
| of the wax. That's probably the same coating you mention.
| It seems that this solution just replaces one problematic
| material with another when it coats something that would
| otherwise be biodegradable.
| ksaj wrote:
| My understanding is that they are starch and cellulose, so
| I'd expect them to eventually completely degrade like any
| other plant material. I'm not an expert, but that seems to
| be the point of products made with it.
|
| Our liquor store (LCBO) used to have bags made from the
| same stuff. When our provincial premiere got everyone to
| charge 5c for each plastic bag, they just stopped using it
| entirely and went to paper bags. I liked those original
| compostable/recyclable ones because they were less stretchy
| and therefore less likely to break than normal plastic
| grocery bags, and way easier to carry because of the
| handles.
|
| But the same reasoning applied - it was more expensive than
| paper bags, so that's all they use there now, too.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > [...] yet the EU banned plastic straws because of the waste
| in the oceans, so now every drink tastes like a schoolbook.
| Well done EU...
|
| Issues are not the Highlander: there can be more than one.
| Single-use plastics just happen to be a problem as well.
|
| And, for what it's worth, people who complain about paper
| straws remind me of sulky toddlers. Just FYI.
| pas wrote:
| if there were a post with "Single use plastics account for an
| alarming amount of plastics in the oceans" would you think
| otherwise?
|
| both are a problem. the industrial fishing nets degrade slower,
| the microplastics (that then likely bioaccumulates) comes from
| all sources.
| [deleted]
| Alupis wrote:
| The data the plastic straw bans were based on was entirely
| made up by a 9 year old[1][2][3] for a school report.
|
| Entirely made up, based on nothing. Yet... here we are with
| plastic straw and bag bans...
|
| Let's think about that for a minute while we contemplate all
| of the similar "data driven" bans we endure.
|
| [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-
| straw-mo...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-
| straws-b...
|
| [3] https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-no-
| evidenc...
| washbrain wrote:
| Wait, the article you linked said he called manufacturers
| to get a range of daily production/market estimates of
| straw production. Hardly seems fair to say based on
| "nothing".
| Alupis wrote:
| He called a couple manufacturers who gave him round
| estimates of production, not consumption and certainly
| nowhere near accurate enough to extrapolate across the
| entire country or world. It also doesn't provide any
| metric to which to gauge this made up consumption rate
| against - is his number expected, high or low?
|
| So... entirely made up.
| recycledmatt wrote:
| It is 50,000 tons per year. In plastic recycling terms, not that
| much volume. A very large plastic recycling facility can do about
| 200,000 tons in a year. http://intelligentliving.co/worlds-
| largest-climate-neutral-p...
|
| A tractor trailer hauls roughly 20 tons - so all the sea nets in
| the world in a year could be hauled by 2,500 trailers. Not that
| much in the scheme of things.
| dakr wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Unlike other forms of marine debris, fishing gear is
| specifically designed to catch marine life. Under certain
| conditions, derelict gear can continue to catch and kill
| organisms for years."
| fleddr wrote:
| Maybe you missed the part where it's IN THE OCEAN.
| notch656a wrote:
| floating recycling center then. Believe there's a video
| somewhere of one in the Charles River or something.
| hairofadog wrote:
| If you'd like to see anecdotal impacts, you can watch the sad yet
| thrilling and satisfying YouTube channel Ocean Conservation
| Namibia, which features a team that captures seals and untangles
| them from fishing gear:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/OceanConservationNamibia
| dakr wrote:
| Not to minimize the impact to ocean life and the environment, but
| lost fishing gear costs money. The upside of which is that there
| is direct financial incentive to recover lost gear. I know
| nothing about this space, but a former coworker started a company
| about ten years ago in part to allow fishers to track and recover
| their gear: https://www.blueoceangear.com/
| RajT88 wrote:
| One report I read was that much of it was discarded as it got
| too damaged to use. So hardly an accidental loss.
| dmurray wrote:
| I would say the bigger incentive is not to lose the gear in the
| first place, but even that doesn't seem to be enough.
| albatross13 wrote:
| You guys haven't seen anything yet:
| https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/august/pandemic-fac...
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(page generated 2022-08-09 23:00 UTC)