Username Taken wrote: ↑Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:50 pm Surely they could clean that up with a couple of fishing boats dragging a net between them.

Yeah, but put it where?

that genius wrote: ↑Sun Jun 03, 2018 6:23 pm
Maritime authorities in Australia have issued an alert after 83 shipping containers fell from a vessel off the coast of New South Wales.

finally they all sailed to Sihanoukville ....

More news on microplastics in the ocean, taken from this research article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 0/full#B54

New Study: 15.5 Million Tons of Microplastics Litter Ocean Floor
Jordan Davidson
Oct. 06, 2020 11:18AM EST

Microplastics can be found everywhere from Antarctica to the Pyrenees. A significant amount of plastic waste ends up in the ocean, but very little has been known about how much ends up on the ocean floor — until now.

A new study has found that the ocean floor contains nearly 15.5 tons of microplastics, CNN reported.

Researchers from Australia's government science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), examined microplastics on the ocean floor near the Great Australian Bight, a large expanse that comprises the bulk of the country's southwest coastline.

The researchers used a robotic submarine to gather and analyze samples taken from six locations up to 236 miles off the coast, and up to almost 10,000 feet deep, reported CNN.

The results, which were published Monday in Frontiers in Marine Science, revealed about 35 times more plastic at the bottom of the ocean than floating at the surface. In 51 samples taken between March and April 2017, researchers found an average of 1.26 microplastic pieces per gram of sediment, a concentration that's up to 25 times greater than any previous deep-sea study, CNN reported.

"Plastic pollution that ends up in the ocean deteriorates and breaks down, ending up as microplastics," Justine Barrett from CSIRO's Oceans and Atmosphere, who led the study, said in a statement in CNN. "The results show microplastics are indeed sinking to the ocean floor."

Dr. Denise Hardesty, a principal research scientist at CSIRO and a co-author of the research, told The Guardian that finding microplastics in such remote locations and depths reveals the extent of global plastic pollution.

"This means it's throughout the water column. This gives us pause for thought about the world we live in and the impact of our consumer habits on what's considered a most pristine place," Dr. Hardesty told The Guardian. "We need to make sure the big blue is not a big trash pit. This is more evidence that we need to stop this at the source."

The World Economic Forum has estimated that an entire garbage truck full of plastic is dumped into the ocean every minute, every day, The New Daily reported.
https://www.ecowatch.com/microplastics- ... belltitem1

Stopping the trash in the rivers, before it gets to the oceans...

Meet Mr Trash Wheel – and the other new devices that eat river plastic
A conveyor belt lifts waste into the 'mouth' of a machine with a water wheel on one side and two 'eyes' on the top

Mr Trash Wheel scooping up debris in Baltimore harbour. More than 17 tonnes have been collected in a day. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
From ‘bubble barriers’ to floating drones, a host of new projects aim to stop plastic pollution before it ever reaches the ocean
Russell Thomas
Last modified on Thu 13 Jan 2022 18.00 GMT

The Great Bubble Barrier is just that – a wall of bubbles. It gurgles across the water in a diagonal screen, pushing plastic to one side while allowing fish and other wildlife to pass unharmed.

The technology, created by a Dutch firm and already being used in Amsterdam, will be trialled in the Porto region of Portugalas part of the EU-supported Maelstrom (marine litter sustainable removal and management) project.

It is the latest in a series of new technologies designed to find sustainable ways to remove and treat river debris before it reaches the sea.

Plastic can be spread by natural disasters, such as a tsunami, which can push invasive species and debris halfway across the world. But rivers carry a much more regular supply of plastic to the oceans. Research in 2017 found that 10 river systems transport 90% of all the plastic that ends up in the world’s oceans (two in Africa – the Nile and Niger – with the other eight in Asia: the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Yangtze, Haihe, Pearl, Mekong and Amur).

Molly Morse, a scientist at UC Santa Barbara’s Benioff Ocean Initiative and lead on its global Clean Currents Coalition, says: “In some cases, communities don’t have access to proper waste pickup services and must turn to what might seem to be the only alternative: dump the trash directly in the river to be carried away.

“In other cases, plastic litter on land is moved by rain or wind into a river, where […] the plastic may make its way to the ocean.”

An estimated 0.8m to 2.7m tonnes of plastic are carried by rivers to the ocean each year. That is the equivalent of 66,000 to 225,000 doubledecker buses.
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... er-plastic
Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation