I went deep sea fishing in Mexico a few years back, and the number of water bottles floating out in the ocean was very alarming. That’s not fishing industry waste, it’s definitely consumer plastics, and it was the only visible waste.
Water bottles floating in the ocean definitely sounds like fishing industry waste. Or whoever is boating and just chucking bottles off the side. I mean think of consumer recycling; only a little fraction of it is probably plastic bottles yet thats all you see in the ocean? Seems hard to believe. There are people who go out and collect seaglass, an industry that exist because boaters throw just that many green brown or blue bottles of beer off the side of the boat to lead to appreciable yields on shore.
No, you’re misunderstanding the scale and making assumptions. It’s widely reported and well known that water bottles polluting the ocean is coming from consumer goods - the volume of plastic trash in the ocean is far far bigger than the entire fishing and all boating industries combined globally. https://plasticoceans.org/the-facts/
“An open access study published in 2022 concluded that 75% up to 86% of the plastic pollution is from fishing and agriculture“
And also in that article it mentions you can’t really see or detect the patch yourself without specific tooling for it as the fragments are often quite small and dispersed. You can’t use satellites to see it either as such.
The preceding paragraph says the exact opposite, but I can take the point that multiple sources are saying fishing trash is significant. It doesn’t sound like the trash visible near Mexico is the same as what they call the Pacific Garbage Patch. Either way, I cannot believe that what I saw was fishing boat trash, there was far, far too much of it. Maybe it’s beachgoer waste, maybe it’s industrial waste. Anyway, you should go look yourself before forming an opinion!
The amount of plastic produced, shipped, and dumped is simply staggering. You can ship 99.9 pct of it to SE Asia and still have enough to pollute all the beaches and snorkelling areas at alarming levels.
I get that but I mean they are talking about plastic bottles floating in the ocean they are observing. Like intact bottles not stuff broken down into microplastics like most of that "run off" plastic waste. Assuming they aren't boating around the mekong delta I'd guess what plastic trash they do see boating (probably near shore not far from a recreational marina with a lot of other recreational traffic) is probably from other boaters just pitching it over the side. Occams Razor and all.
I don’t know where the trash came from, but it’s frustrating to have someone who doesn’t know anything contradicting my observations. Why are you speculating wildly about where I was, and making assumptions about something you haven’t seen in order to contradict an actual observation? All you’re saying is you don’t believe me, but based on imaginary made-up reasons. You should really go see it first. Occam’s Razor will support observations. What I saw was many many miles from a marina (deep sea fishing), lots of samples over several days of more or less constant density trash covering thousands of square miles. Trash from boats does not explain that. Occam’s Razor and all.
> In a 2014 study researchers sampled 1571 locations throughout the world's oceans and determined that discarded fishing gear such as buoys, lines and nets accounted for more than 60% of the mass of plastic marine debris.
