Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumRemote Tiny Hawaiian Island World Heritage Site, Home To 57 Tons Of Garbage Removed By Divers
The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, one of the largest marine refuges in the world, is filled with a wide array of ocean life, as well as 57 tons of garbage.
At least, it was until the NOAA sent a team to the World Heritage Site in October to clean up the trash, which had shockingly accumulated in just a year's time. This stretch of tiny uninhabited islands and coral reefs seems to be the endpoint of the massive amounts of garbage that humans dump into the oceans.
A group of 17 NOAA divers aboard the Oscar Elton Sette spent 33 days removing 57 tons of garbage, ranging from bottle caps and cigarette lighters to giant nets lost by factory fishing trawlers - one of which was 28 feet by 7 feet and weighed 11.5 tons.
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And among the thousands of pieces of plastic they retrieved were 7,436 hard plastic fragments, 3,758 bottle caps, 1,469 plastic beverage bottles and nearly 500 lighters. "The amount of marine debris we find in this remote, untouched place is shocking," Mark Manuel, operations manager for NOAA Fisheries Coral Reef Ecosystem Division and chief scientist for the mission, said in a press release. "Every day, we pulled up nets weighing hundreds of pounds from the corals. We filled the dumpster on the Sette to the top with nets, and then we filled the decks. There's a point when you can handle no more, but there's still a lot out there."
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http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/10439/20141118/hawaiian-marine-refuge-filled-with-ocean-life-and-garbage.htm
daleanime
(17,796 posts)Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)It is time to end the age of plastic.
calimary
(81,312 posts)Heck, I can walk the dog ONE BLOCK up, or down, from my house, and there's shit all over the place. People litter all over. I fill up a separate poo bag with nothing but trash. EVERY TIME. Several times a day!!! Cigarette butts. Wrappers - candy wrappers, gum wrappers, cigarette pack wrappers, energy bar wrappers. Potato chip and Fritos bags. Plastic bottles. Soda cans. Discarded Starbucks cups and plastic lids. Drinking straws. Wadded up paper. Wadded up paper napkins. And those annoying little green plastic toothpick things - so many of those! Oh yeah, AND poo. Literally. Some people crap their dogs on the grass easement between the sidewalks and the curb - and just leave it there and don't bother picking it up. W.T.F.???!??!?!?!? Makes me mad. Makes me want to know - "WHO BROUGHT THEM UP?????? WHO TAUGHT THEM (or showed them) THAT THIS WAS OKAY??????" What a fucking DISGRACE! It's a fucking SIN!!!!!
The selfish, thoughtless, utterly cavalier attitude too many humans have for our precious environment is just sickening!!!
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)They've been a plague on the planet.