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The seafloor is covered in trash

Started by Smartmarzipan, June 26, 2013, 04:25:48 PM

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Smartmarzipan

Researchers study 18,000 hours of deep sea footage, find ocean seafloor is covered in trash (Video)
http://www.treehugger.com/ocean-conserv ... trash.html

QuoteWe've all seen images of trash on beaches, or floating on the surface of the ocean. But a surprising amount ends up on the deep seafloor, at depths so great that it's been very hard for us to really know what the situation is. Because it's no very practical to fund a deep sea mission just to look for trash, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute instead decided to comb through thousands of hours of video recorded by remotely controlled vehicles over the past 20+ years, specifically looking for debris.

About 1/3 of the trash were made of plastic, more than half of those being plastic bags, which are notoriously dangerous for marine life. Next were metal objects, at about 1/5 of the total. Other common debris included rope, fishing equipment, glass bottles, paper, and cloth items.

Because of deep sea conditions (very cold water, little oxygen, few bacteria), all of this trash will likely stick around much longer than it would do on the ground.

 :(
Legi, Intellexi, Condemnavi.

"Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die." ~Anon

Inter arma enim silent leges

Plu

Interestingly enough, this might make the sea bottom a huge treasure trove of archeological finds.

Gawdzilla Sama

I've passed square miles of floating garbage at sea, and the last time was in the early '80s, so it can only have gotten worse since then.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: "Plu"Interestingly enough, this might make the sea bottom a huge treasure trove of archeological finds.
"Our studies have concluded that vast quantities of material was sacrificed to a single god, each piece having that god's name somewhere on the item. We therefore believe that CHINA was the most important god of the era."
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Brian37

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers." Obama
Poetry By Brian37 Like my poetry on Facebook Under BrianJames Rational Poet and also at twitter under Brianrrs37

Brian37

Our species is so selfish we focus only on our own homes, and when magically the smoke dissipates and the trash truck takes our garbage away, it doesn't go anywhere, it disappears like a like David Copperfield making a jet "disappear".
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers." Obama
Poetry By Brian37 Like my poetry on Facebook Under BrianJames Rational Poet and also at twitter under Brianrrs37

Solitary

I wonder how much of it is helicopters and planes still in moth balls that were being dumped overboard during Vietnam to make the records correct?  :shock:  Believe me it happened. Solitary
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Plu

It's probably more of that than you think. Almost every economic model we've ever came up with makes trash something you dump, not process. As a result, we have a lot of it.

Smartmarzipan

Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"
Quote from: "Plu"Interestingly enough, this might make the sea bottom a huge treasure trove of archeological finds.
"Our studies have concluded that vast quantities of material was sacrificed to a single god, each piece having that god's name somewhere on the item. We therefore believe that CHINA was the most important god of the era."

Ha!

I snorted.

 :lol:
Legi, Intellexi, Condemnavi.

"Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die." ~Anon

Inter arma enim silent leges

SGOS

Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"I've passed square miles of floating garbage at sea, and the last time was in the early '80s, so it can only have gotten worse since then.
Some of it is a hazard to navigation, too.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: "SGOS"
Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"I've passed square miles of floating garbage at sea, and the last time was in the early '80s, so it can only have gotten worse since then.
Some of it is a hazard to navigation, too.
Yep, the seawater intake to our condensers were 42" in diameter. Get a load of trash into that and the engine has to be shut down while we go in and remove it by hand. If both engine get trashed you have a large warship drifting like berg.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

SGOS

Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"
Quote from: "SGOS"
Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"I've passed square miles of floating garbage at sea, and the last time was in the early '80s, so it can only have gotten worse since then.
Some of it is a hazard to navigation, too.
Yep, the seawater intake to our condensers were 42" in diameter. Get a load of trash into that and the engine has to be shut down while we go in and remove it by hand. If both engine get trashed you have a large warship drifting like berg.
Yep, 42" is big enough to accommodate all kinds of trash.  No limit to what you can fit in there.

Elohim

"Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet."
- PopeyesPappy

GurrenLagann

Is there even a real solution to the problems dealing with garbage?

If only we could launch it into the Sun. Yep, it's gonna happen...eventually....maybe....  :-$
Which means that to me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can\'t give way, is the offer of something not worth having.
[...]
Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty & wisdom, will come to you that way.
-Christopher Hitchens

Plu

Launching it into the sun isn't dealing with the garbage problem. Recycling is. And we're slowly getting there, but there's still a long way to go.