Choke on this

[GoFish]

(CBS) Sailing across the Pacific, the research vessel Algalita was more than 1,000 miles from land, but as CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone reports, it never escaped unsettling signs of civilization.

"Day after day after day, when I came on deck I saw objects floating by: toothbrushes, bottlecaps and soap bottles," says Captain Charles Moore.

The trash he found floating, like a Japanese traffic cone, was from much of the world.

Beneath the surface, a jellyfish was so entangled in a scrap of synthetic net that its tentacles had grown around the plastic strands.

The trash was found in a patch of ocean called the North Pacific Gyre where the currents can trap floating debris for years.

"I have no doubt that some of these things that we're discovering out there have been there since the dawn of the plastic era in the 1950's," says Moore.

As plastic ages it crumbles, leaving so many tiny fragments that Moore found seawater in the Gyre contained more plastic than plankton, the tiny sea life that many ocean creatures feed on.

To jellyfish, the plastic particles seem like food.

"It's like putting them on a plastic diet," says Moore. "It becomes part of their tissue."

In his lab, Moore studies jellyfish embedded with plastic.

"I saw that it had brightly colored plastic fragments inside," he says. "Pieces like this blue monofilament fishing line."

That Moore found lots of plastic in sea trash does not surprise Rob Krebs, of the American Plastics Council.

"Just because it's everywhere, it shouldn't be the whipping boy of environmentalists," says Krebs.

Krebs says plastic is ever more widely used because it does so much, so well.

"It's a good material, and so when we talk about Charles Moore we really have to look in the mirror," says Krebs. "We need to look at ourselves."

Put another way: Plastic doesn't pollute, people pollute.

"It's everyone's fault," says Moore. "There are no guiltless parties here."

There's more here:http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-...ing-our-oceans

[reeldick]

Please read the latest issue of Alaska Magazine. It has an article about the same issue of trash but on the beaches.
Humans have to be the biggest pigs on this earth.

[Abalone]

I was aboard the U.S.S. Ticonderoga 1968 to 1972. I seen a lot of stuff thrown off the fantail. Somewhere in about 1970 the Navy started this program where we sorted all trash. We had three trash cans for every
location. The cans were lined with plastic bags. Instead of just taking the
trash to the fantail and dumping it over board they put the sorted trash in the bags and then the threw it over board. So on a calm day you could look out over the ocean as see Plastic bags floating everywhere. Of course you had to be careful about security because in the Golf we had to be concerned about the enemy going through everything.

Yep ! We are pigs.

On another occasion we threw Fifty perfectly good brass light fixtures over the side in boxes. These were spendy fixtures they bought to light up the ship while in long beach, Back when the protesters were a threat.

Those boxes floated high off the coast of California. I wonder wherethey are now ?

[drhall99]

Yup, everytime a Navy ship goes through a supply audit the commands go into paperwork panic and through everything not on their books overboard. As anyone who has been a mechanic in the Navy will attest, we had to have a rathole of parts to get through a patrol but if our stash of parts was found, over the side it went, or out the trash ejector on our submarine. I was ordered to throw out valves that cost more than $20K each and a lot more than that. I have been told that carriers will do similar things with things like vehicles and planes, but I don't know if that is true or just stories. I suspect that it is true.

[Joe Schwab]

When I was with the Engineers in Okinawa, mid 60s, we were all issued complete sets of hand tools. Wrenches, Sockets, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, even Micrometers and Calipers in fancy wooden lined boxes. When we left we threw everything into one pile and it was sold for scrap.

We were told it was cheaper than logging it back into supply and reissuing it. Don't even think of trying to bring it home!

[the bear]

i was an engineman 2nd class on a ddg and was sicking to have to throw all our hard to come by parts overboardthink we all seen so much of it,,just hope it isnt like that in todays military

[Smoked Salmon]

It's not that the toilet costs $50k, it's that you have to replace it after each flush.

[Something Good]

Tax dollars hard at work.

[Chrome Bumper]

No incinerators?

[Blind Bobber]

To bring this topic a bit closer to home we have all seen the trash floating about in our favorite fishing hole or waterway. My kids and I have a big trash bag on board for this and net whatever we can. Give it some consideration next trip out. What else can one do?
BLIND BOBBER

[Smoked Salmon]

Part of the safety briefing on Odin is to state the Federal Law about dumping plastics, and to point at the plastic grocery sack looped over the armrest. It works.

[Cliff D.]

I remember the sharks picking us up coming out of San Fransisco bay, just waiting for us to get out far enough to start dumping trash.