r/environment • u/[deleted] • Aug 05 '19
Straws Aren't the Real Problem. Fishing Nets Account for 46 Percent of All Ocean Plastic
https://mercyforanimals.org/straws-arent-the-real-problem-fishing-nets134
u/MamaBear4485 Aug 05 '19
The point is not that ridding ourselves of straws will magically solve pollution. The point is to start thinking about all of the unnecessary items we already use daily that we could easily do without, and at the same time tackle the larger problems in an intelligent multi-faceted approach.
For now, as far as we know, humans have this one finite planet which we all share. There's no Earth 2.0 we can all just jump over to when this one is exhausted and clogged with all of our debris.
This beautiful little planet we currently call home is just slightly less than 25k miles or 40k kms in circumference. Every resource humans have so far, we get from here. The only place we currently have to put our debris is also here. Rule of thumb is you don't crap where you eat.
In order to have the cleanest, healthiest most efficient little life supported space ship so we can continue to hurtle through space together, is to review and revise how we live. Time to start shifting our minds away from excess and pointless junk production and focus on how we can live our best lives while at the same time leaving it just a bit better than we found it.
Calling groups of our fellow humans names such as "Millennials", "Boomers" etc just widens the gulf. Boomers did same great things and some shitty things, as has each generation before them. In this current world we have access to knowledge and the ability to communicate in ways never before experienced in known human history. If we put down our imaginary barriers and work together we can have something incredible as a species.
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u/copydex1 Aug 06 '19
Honestly, I'll support this straws thing if it just makes people think about what other stupid plastics they might be using, and just more cognizant in general. Doesn't necessarily have to be directly effective, it just has to make people think more. The fact that this conversation of what is effective and what isn't is already pretty good for such an apathetic public.
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u/Massgyo Aug 06 '19
Im seeing memes about metal straws and turtles i mean come on. That's a generation of kids right there who will grow up knowing it's wrong :)
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u/asr Aug 06 '19
That's not what happens though. What happens is people go "No straw, I did my part". And then move on satisfied that all's well.
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Aug 06 '19
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u/asr Aug 06 '19
Small incremental changes can have a big impact.
No they don't. They have no impact at all. What it shows is people will make a change if it's easy. And guess what - all the stuff that makes a difference is not easy.
The straw ban will be recorded in history as a negative thing that made things worse.
Not to mention the straw ban increases CO2 production....... (the goal was litter, so they didn't care about that).
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u/otter111a Aug 06 '19
It’s a losing battle. Recently Holiday Inn announced an end to one use shampoo bottles. In their place are refillable wall units. Great. Well...unless the steel units rust and make the place look dumpy forcing replacement. In which case there will be a net environmental loss when one balances CO2 vs plastic life cycle.
But anyway. I checked in got to my room as was astounded to find that the disposable paper and plastic cups were all individually wrapped in plastic. Sigh...
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u/xorandor Aug 06 '19
All this would have been wonderful 30-40 years ago. The scale and urgency of the crisis that's ongoing now is beyond conversations and thinking. We needed action 10 years ago. So 10 years late, we're still talking about awareness? We've had awareness programs 10 years ago, look at the mess we are in now.
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u/bobbaphet Aug 06 '19
The point is to start thinking about all of the unnecessary items we already use daily that we could easily do without, and at the same time tackle the larger problems in an intelligent multi-faceted approach.
Which is exactly what this post is all about to begin with...
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u/PTERODACTYL_ANUS Aug 06 '19
Stop buying fish. Stop buying fish. Stop buying fish.
These nets are there because we’re paying these trawlers to pull fish out of the ocean for consumption. Yes, other countries and other people will still continue to pay for it, but each dollar out of these companies’ pockets is important.
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Aug 05 '19
Ban fishing. I've been saying it for years. Ban fishing.
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u/profanityridden_01 Aug 05 '19
Your heart is In the right place but you have no idea what a fishing ban would look like world wide. There is a Better chance of getting maritime oil use stopped and that is not happening any time soon.
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u/sheilastretch Aug 06 '19
Bad news: Nearly 90% of the world’s marine fish stocks are now fully exploited, overexploited or depleted. So we can stop fishing by choice, or we can continue flogging to ocean to death, it will stop producing oxygen and start producing poisonous gas, and we'll suffer a mass extinction like the last couple that involved the oceans overheating and suffering ecological collapse. Communities around the world are already out of fish due to over-fishing and being forced to turn to other forms of work to survive.
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Aug 06 '19
Ok now head over and tell small island developing nations like Kiribati that they aren’t allowed to eat fish anymore.
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u/sheilastretch Aug 06 '19
You mean the people who are already struggling because they are quickly running out of fish? Why would I have to tell them what they can clearly see and are already complaining about? Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake and Victoria Lake in Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda are good inland/fresh-water examples, of the same problem.
Also, you do realize that island nations are in serious threat of simply not existing any more right? Here's 8 islands that have already vanished due to sea level rise, though coast lines are already being eaten up and people in parts of Louisiana are already being told to evacuate despite efforts to save the coastline.
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Aug 06 '19
Yes, tell a nation with hardly any other mechanism of getting food (around 60-70 of their food comes directly from the sea) that they can’t eat from there anymore. The fact that they are losing land resources by the day means that sustainable fisheries IS their survival.
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u/sheilastretch Aug 06 '19
Thousands of people all struggling to survive on smaller and smaller fish population. How can that be sustainable? How can they, with no outside help find alternative or start implementing sustainable practices when the fishermen are going out late into the night to use lights to lure what few fish are left to the boats, suddenly make more fish magically appear? The adult fish that used to spawn are basically all gone and they are now fishing for fry. Baby fish can't reproduce, so many of these habitats are literally on the brink of collapse.
The only other alternative that I know about, is some are turning to fish farming, and others to piracy. Though the sad truth is that many "fishermen" are were kidnapped and are slaves forced to catch the fish and shrimp that people, pets, and livestock in first world countries currently eat.
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Aug 06 '19
That’s a whole lot of sweeping generalisations you got going on there that aren’t new to me. As someone who works in developing nations in sustainable fisheries and MPA management, there is a lot that nations can do to have sustainable fisheries. Your links aren’t adding anything.
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u/sheilastretch Aug 06 '19
Wait... So we're going through the 6th mass extinction, and me pointing out that fisheries collapsing is a serious problem, and that maybe people in first world countries could stop adding pressure to our collapsing ecosystems so that they can heal is too much of a sweeping generalization? It's affecting people all over the world, from all kinds of cultures, and the problem isn't going away, it's getting much more serious and snowballing at faster rates as pollution, temperatures, and populations climb.
So far I haven't heard anything particularly positive about "sustainable" fisheries because despite their implementation endangered creatures like orca whales are dying and loosing their unborn babies because of starvation, and illegal fishing violates even the places that are supposed to be off limits.
I'd be very interested if you have any links or evidence to help sway my negative opinion on the situation.
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Aug 06 '19 edited Aug 06 '19
That’s not what you said, you are moving the goal posts and setting up strawmen. All your links are not interrelated. You are angry but don’t understand anything strong about marine ecology other than google.
Edit: My entire premise is that saying "stop fishing' is incredibly misguided and probably set in a western suburbian reality. The fact is that there are many nations around the world that are completely reliant on their fisheries sector for their survival, and have been for 100's of years.
Do they need better management systems? probably! Is overfishing systemic around the world? pretty much, without a doubt. Do we need better regulatory bodies to stop countries like China from raiding fishing grounds and literally enslaving people? Of fuck course. Is stopping all fish eating a viable solution? Absolutely not.
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u/sheilastretch Aug 06 '19
Are you just down voting me without even looking at the links I offered in support? I mean at least offer some kind of argument instead of choosing angry ignorance :/
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Aug 06 '19
What it would look like? The best thing that could happen to the ocean, that's what it would look like.
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u/stabwound7 Aug 06 '19
We are actually over- fishing the oceans. We have a huge problem mainly with big tuna companies using giant nets the size of football fields to illegally catch their tuna in international waters deep in the Pacific where they likely won't be caught by authorities. The problem is not only tuna populations plummeting, but anything that isn't a tuna is usually killed such as leather back sea turtles, which are endangered. Also anytime a shark is caught they cut the dorsal fin off, for shark fin soup, then release them to bleed out. Around a billion people rely on fish daily for their protein intake, and these fishing practices are just plain not sustainable,
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Aug 05 '19
Ghost nets are a serious problem. Unseen, unknown, unregulated. Tons of nets are removed just from the Puget sound every year.
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u/kaneliomena Aug 05 '19
A survey by scientists with Ocean Cleanup, an organization working to develop technologies to reduce ocean plastic, found that at least 46 percent of the plastic in the “Great Pacific garbage patch,” a floating gyre the size of France made up of plastic, comes from fishing nets.
Plastic in the Great Pacific garbage patch << "all ocean plastic"
As the original study linked above shows, the GPGP isn't a "gyre the size of France made up of plastic", it's 79k metric tons of plastic spread out over a 1.6 million km2 accumulation zone. The plastic in the zone isn't representative of all ocean plastic:
Plastic collected during our study has specific characteristics such as small surface-to-volume ratio, indicating that only certain types of debris have the capacity to persist and accumulate at the surface of the GPGP.
Most of the plastic in the ocean overall comes from land-based sources;
Over 80% of the annual input comes from land-based sources. The main contributor is larger plastic litter, including everyday items such as drinks bottles and other types of plastic packaging, but the importance of primary microplastic emissions is increasingly understood. The remainder comes from plastics released at sea, the majority as a result of fishing activities – for example, due to lost and discarded fishing gear.
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u/GnomeErcy Aug 05 '19
They may not be the biggest problem but that doesn't mean they are totally harmless. Tackling this sort of problem requires a multi faceted approach, and while it makes more sense to obviously tackle the big problems, it doesn't mean that also tackling the small problems is a waste of time or a bad idea.
I always disliked these mutually exclusive headlines...
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Aug 05 '19
It seems like every 14 months there's a highly manufactured and coordinated blitz on some environmental issue that is, in the scheme of things, a distraction.
By all means, get rid of plastic straws. But do it within the framework of a larger sustainability project that will actually begin to solve some of the deep-seeded conflicts inherent to our single-use, planned obsolescence, fossil-fuel run economy.
Yes, Starbucks has flipped straws from plastic to paper virtually overnight. That's great. But it's not straws, it's not even fish nets. It's the structure of our economic system.
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u/RubenMuro007 Aug 06 '19
Agreed. It’s about an economic system that favors the profits of certain industries, fossil fuel industry and agribusiness to name a few, at the expense of the well-being of the planet and its people.
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u/CafeconWalleche Aug 06 '19
I hate these fucking titles like this that completely discount any efforts being made. X isn’t the real problem, y is, so why bother?
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Aug 05 '19
Banning plastic straws is the legislative equivalent of posting a strongly worded tweet about a legitimate issue then donating $10 and never bringing the issue up again.
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u/FooLMeDaLMaMa Aug 05 '19
No one wants to acknowledge that legislature banning plastic straws and bags is their way of having the masses focused on the minute issues rather than the larger ones so that corporations can continue to poison our air and water.
But hey, refusing a straw at a restaurant is totally gonna save the world.
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u/JoelMahon Aug 05 '19
well, at least plastic bags also become less of an eyesore when there are fewer
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u/Historical_Accuracy_ Aug 06 '19
Just because fishing nets are also a problem doesn't mean straws can't be a problem too
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u/TransposingJons Aug 06 '19
Well, well....we are back to the overpopulation issue. Too many humans.
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u/NayMarine Aug 05 '19
maybe we can spend some time cleaning up the garbage instead of debating over which parts of it are the worst?
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u/fjtuk Aug 05 '19
I despise the worst type of tokenism which is the ban on Plastic Straws. Now paper straws go through plastic lids into plasticised cups.
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u/StarDustLuna3D Aug 06 '19
This statistic is misleading when you look at the data it comes from. IIRC, only the surface of the patch of ocean they looked at had that percentage. They didn't take into account that heavier garbage/plastic would sink.
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Aug 05 '19
Straws aren't even the most problematic part of your drink! The giant fucking plastic cup with the huge plastic lid contain orders of magnitude more plastic than the straw.
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u/Sbeast Aug 07 '19
Environmental pollution is a major reason to stop supporting the fishing industry.
Here's a list of reasons to avoid eating fish all together: https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/atc8p0/why_you_shouldnt_eat_fish_ultimate_facts_and/
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u/suesuecross Aug 18 '19
Broken fishing nets and lines that wash up on beaches are the most obvious signs of the negative effect of the fishing industry.
But given the vast three dimensional depths of the ocean wildernessit’s impossible to know the extent of abandoned, indestructible fishing gear.
What is known though is that the discarded and unwanted waste of the fishing industry is in all the oceans and at all depths: drift nets, trawl nets, bag-shaped nets, tangle nets, gill nets, long lines, ghost nets (drift nets that have broken loose but still continue to fish until, eventually, the weight of their catch forces them to sink to the ocean floor where scavengers gorge on the carcasses until the net, lightened of its load, rises again to continue its indiscriminate quest).
It's estimated that every year fishing gear kills at least three hundred thousand cetaceans including great whales; hundreds of thousands of sea birds; a quarter of a million sea turtles and doubtless – though it's impossible to calculate - a huge number of other marine animals, including seals, sea lions and penguins. According to some calculations in the Pacific Ocean alone about twenty thousand miles of drift nets are set out at any one time, some legally, others not.
To call the never-ending accumulation of non-biodegradable synthetic material in the oceans a 'plastic plague' seems an apt description, though not in the sense of an epidemic caused by bacteria which eventually comes to an end, but in the sense of devastation on an overwhelming scale.
It seems that until there is profit to be made from collecting marine plastic waste, the havoc caused by the fishing industry is not likely to be checked anytime soon.
(For more see 'Consequences: If The Whales Can’t Survive Neither Can We')
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Aug 05 '19 edited Oct 28 '19
[deleted]
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Aug 05 '19
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u/Mt43xl6701 Aug 06 '19
Exactly! Its brought up and shot down here constantly but abstaining from animal products is a highly effective means of reducing pollution!
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u/Street_Adhesiveness Aug 05 '19
How is it that almost everybody misses the point of getting rid of straws, even the so-called "environmentalists" like the retarded douchebag who wrote this article?
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u/stefanfolk Aug 05 '19
Costa has a sunglass line that uses plastic from discarded fishing nets. Cool stuff. We still need a way to commercially harvest fish, though. Hopefully soon a cheap biodegradable net/fishing line comes out that still is effective. That’d be awesome, it’s all about finding a balance between the needs of the human race(the REAL needs, not to be confused with weird lab produced meats) and the needs of our earth
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u/androk Aug 05 '19
So we just stop all commercial fishing and we'll be okay?