Rising plastic menace choking sealife

This is a rather sad bit of news apparently all the plastic dumped into the ocean is starting to choke out the sea life in the area

The amount of plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean has reached alarming levels, drastically impacting seabird populations, according to a new study.Scientists at the University of British Columbia looked at populations of Northern Fulmars, a bird species distributed widely in the north Atlantic and north Pacific. They found that more than 92 per cent of dead birds on beaches in British Columbia, Canada, and the US states of Washington and Oregon, had ingested significant quantities of plastic refuseThe Northern Fulmars are acting like canaries in coal mines, warning us about a growing problem," says zoologist Stephanie Avery-Gomm, the lead author of the study reported in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Its not just animals in the pacific coast

Dr Jennifer Lavers from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic studies at the University of Tasmania says the new Canadian findings reflect her own research on Australian seabirds.Fifteen years ago, 65 per cent of Australian marine birds were affected by plastics, and Lavers believes it could be closer to 85 per cent nowHer research on short-tailed and flesh-footed shearwaters has found that one hundred per cent of the birds now suffer from ingested plastics.Unfortunately it's bad for both species," says Lavers. "All the birds suffer things like perforations and blockages of the digestive system, or ingested toxins leaching from the plastics."Last week, I removed 442 pieces of plastic from an albatross chick only a few months old.

Yes thats right 442 pieces of plastic just wow its incredibly disgusting to think of all the ways that we are trashing our planet just think of what our planet is going to look like in 50 years if we keep up at the rate we are going

ABC sience

Aim high level lasers @ plastic and melt into plastic islands. Take or move plastic islands in regions were animals like polar bears are located who have to take long swims due to ice sheet removal from climate change. Let plastic islands accrue ice on them and they then become artificial land masses. Further you can make larger versions to sit off of tsunami/eq coasts for emergency evacs...

reply to post by ninjas4321


I'm sure I read somewhere on ATS a while back that there was an invention which turns plastic back into oil.

Why can't all that free plastic be collected and use this invention? (if true).

The plastic is also in people who eat fish. This is going to be a problem, even if no one realizes it yet. There will inevitably be a plastic tipping point, and marine life will start to perish at a faster rate, because there will only be more plastic, not less. The Pacific ocean is full of plastic and no one is going to pay to clean it up, because there is no profit in trash removal and it is in international waters, so it belongs to no one.

If one looks at the sand on the Oregon coast, in certain places, you can see that it is full of very tiny bits of plastic. It did not used to be like that. Some places on the coast just collect plastic, like water bottle lids and other small things, but it did not used to be such small pieces.

reply to post by ninjas4321


the pacific garbage patch has been known for many years. i suspect that the tsunami on the east coast of japan hasn't helped the situation.
f.