A Remote Paradise Island Is Now a Plastic Junkyard

[darkside 61]

Eastern side of the Tuamotus was the worst we saw out in blue water.

Same sort of stuff mostly fishing boat discards.

However most polluted anywhere was Straights of Malacca through to Thailand.

[John B 106]

You want to see plastic rubbish waste generated by one industry? Take a walk on any western Coromandel cove this winter or summer. Here.. I'll tell you what you'll find in our so called green country. 10 or 15 or 30 mussell farm buoys, a truckload of mussell farm rope and cut off knots the bastards chuck over the side , and a few buckets of plastic bait bags and drink bottles from the amateur fisherman. Our aquaculture is an industry without care or consequence, or regulation.

[eruptn 95]

I remember in 1987 when we were doing marine geophysics between the Kermadec trench and Lord Howe Rise we trawled for plastic debris and captured grams per square kilometre even then. The most common stuff was the beeds, then fishing related debris.

[ScottiE 174]

Wow dude, who pissed in your cornflakes this morning. My comment was just my Point of view from what the Picture shows. Am I not allowed to out forward my point of view? It's interesting to hear the comments from those that have seen this kind of thing and I take that on board. I am surprised that just Fishing gear is washing up, I would have expected a mix of plastics. But OK.

Yeh sorry perhaps a bit harsh. But your POV was ignorant and I had already had to deal with a lot of other ignoramuses pissing in my cereal yesterday. There's only so much of other people's pish you can handle!

[idlerboat 116]

Sea drift amazes me !

I have seen many beaches with LOTS of crap on them. The sorting effect of current and wind on objects can be truly remarkable with some beaches having almost exclusively one type of object...

Turtle suffer very badly from floating plastic because they have difficulty in distinguishing thin plastic from Jelly fish.

(The aquarium in Mooloolaba has a tank with plastic in it,  in the Jelly fish section to prove the point !!)

They cannot disgorge it either.  

On a huge percentage of beaches, if you run your hands through the sand and look closely you will see that it is full of tiny particles of plastic. Sometimes you can make it really obvious by "gold panning" a handful..

 

We have done an experiment out of curiosity on drift...  Five classic glass bottles were released with a name, lon lat and phone number.... yep message in a bottle.

all over 300 nautical miles from the nearest land mass....

How many would you guess were found and contacted us ?

 

I have also found many many intact fluro tubes...

High up on rocks as well as scattered along beaches...so plastic debri that is virtually indestructible just keeps on going ...and going...and going..

 

PS boats often dont see the worst beaches/Bays/coves etc because they are mostly the wrong side to anchor....

[wheels 543]

 

Yeh sorry perhaps a bit harsh. But your POV was ignorant and I had already had to deal with a lot of other ignoramuses pissing in my cereal yesterday. There's only so much of other people's pish you can handle!

Well remember that none of us can write novels on here explaining all our feelings and views and minute details of those etc etc. I just wrote a comment based on what is stuck in the Sand and while I accept the comments of the others, that it is general plastic washed up, even now looking at that Pic, it seems hard to believe when all I see are larger number of floats and net. Perhaps a Fishing vessel had to cut a net free. But add in the pieces of timber and other stuff, which looks like has come from a Boat, surely it is fairly easy to think it looks like a fishing vessel has washed/broken up. Obviously this has come from a or several fishing vessels.

By the way, for those that are worried about plastics in the Ocean. Chances are you are part of the problem. One of the biggest creators of the microscopic particles of plastics in out ocean is from the synthetic clothing of the likes of Polar fleece etc. The fibres wash down the drain and continue right through the treatment plants and flush straight on out to Sea. Even though the microbeads used in some Body washes etc are an issue, it is not as bad as clothing fibres.

[Island Time 1,232]

Wheels, what you can see is only a small percentage, on the surface, like an iceberg. It's mostly in the column in the sand, and goes down deep.

[ex TL systems 63]

greenpeace needs to convince the japanese government, that to win friends and influence people they should announce that they will no longer hunt and kill whales for scientific or any other purposes but instead will convert their whaling factory ships into plastic recycling ships with the harpoon boats collecting all the rubbish , rubbish goes in one end and toyota and yamaha parts come out the other.

 and if the japanese don,t want to do it then greenpeace should raise money and set up one boat to do it,as an example,

 

 i,m sure they would get a lot of support and volunteers prepared to assist .

[ex TL systems 63]

or maybe some of the big mining or oil companys like shell or bp would like be seen doing their bit for saving the planet, isn,t most of the plastic hydro carbon based after all?

[ex TL systems 63]

yep packaging is a big problem , especially if you live on a boat or in a place without anywhere to dispose of it.  We built a small house recently and managed to use some of the polystyrene packaging from the kitchen etc as extra insulation in some of the walls.In a lot of places it is just burnt.

[rigger 47]

Went ashore at Obs Cay in the 90's, south eastern side was covered in trash, picked up a boat load of it, but no doubt it was covered again in a short while.

[wheels 543]

I feel the Plastic Bag is the wrong one to pick on. This fight to ban the Bag is the wrong fight. Simply, I don't see that many bags in our environment. Not saying I have not seen any, just not as many as the argument put forward would suggest. But there is plenty of other Plastics out there.  And sometimes the alternatives are no better. For instance, the plain ole brown paper bag is actually 5 times more harmful to our environment to produce it than a plastic bag. Then add in the many times a plastic bag gets reused.
The biggest cause of Plastic in our environment is lazy and I don't give a $#% People. Plus the Landfills for that matter. That video used by TV news whenever this argument comes up, the vid of Plastic bags in Trees and against a fence is actually a Landfill and the things just blow around the place. Clearly the way the rubbish is dumped needs addressing to contain such stuff. If a Landfill was a private Business, you can bet the Council would be down on them like a ton of bricks with RM breaches and make the company captivate the bags flying around in the wind.