PLASTIC BAGS and our WATER WORLD

The poor fish that catched it may have another opinion...

Ok. Maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone have statistics to show that beer bottle caps hurt fish? I will stop my barbaric practice if such statistics exist.

Don't know about the statistics you asked for but would you be satisfied a list of the number of marine species that bottom feed?
On the subject of plastic bags does anyone know why the bags certain markets use have machined holes in the bottom. We try to reuse the bags for kitty litter, etc., but are unable to reuse. Is this done so more bags can be sold?

Children are sometimes playing with bags over their heads, the holes can save a child from suffocation....

This also goes for the idea of smashing bottles into pieces to sink them. Ask a fisherman about it...

I was cleaning my fish freezer of ice once and the marine clean up crew came whilst I was doing so and started screaming at me to "not throw anything in the ocean!!!!"
Otherwise nothing from my boat goes overboard- including cig butts (not mine- I don't smoke) or bottle tops. We drink out of cans anyways.

Yea, that whole zero tolerance sillyness makes my skin crawl. Ironically, some of the most regulated waterways in this country are also some of the dirtiest, and they aren't in places you would expect. Other places with little or no Eco-management regulations, like the Bahamas, have gin clear waters. Go figure. Even Miami and the Keys have imperfect reefs. It's not from bottle caps or ice in the water, but from sewage and TOO MANY PEOPLE living in the region. Ie Miami.

Terms like "barking up the wrong tree" and "poor or allocation of resources" come to mind when I think about the way the government handles not only protecting, but repairing our damaged environment.

I've never run across a marina that objected to clean water (ice) going into the ocean so I'm guessing that they may have thought there could be fish remains included and maybe over reacted. We all know how pleasant the back of a marina with bad flow can get when it collects fish parts.

50 years ago plastic was the butt of jokes. To call something "plastic" was to call it cheap. Most products were made of steel, wood, glass, rubber, etc. When they broke we rebuilt, repaired or found different uses for them.
The plastics industries went to great pains to make us a disposable society and we bought it. Now we're hooked. Now most things last a few days to a couple of years, but the plastic they're made of apparently never goes away.
For the past 20 years there has been a major push for recycling, yet you say that we still only recycle 3%. I'd call that failure and to continue beating our heads against the wall while we build plastic islands seems ridiculous. Maybe it's time to attack the problem from a different direction. What about pushing to use plastics only when another medium can't be used. Cloth diapers worked for a long time. What would be the effect if we stopped using just disposable diapers? Of course we're not willing to put up with diaper pails though are we. How about plastic packaging? No? Toys that last? Maybe we shouldn't put things into production for public consumption until we have a way to destroy it. Maybe, just because we can do or make something doesn't mean that we should. Of course the plastics industry (and a few others) wouldn't put up with that.
By the time recycling catches up to production we'll be up to our ear lobes. Not to worry though. By the time that happens we'll be able to raise ourselves up on a pile of nuclear waste so we can breath the polluted air. I'm just glad I won't be around when our great-grand kids ask why we weren't willing to sacrifice.

....It would disappear back into nature within a few months.

That hasn't worked during the past 20 years. What will make it different now? We need to recover 110% of what is produced. 3% doesn't even delay the inevitable.

In that case we'd just better accept the world we're creating and stop wasting our effort banging our heads against the wall. Want to go fishing for diapers kids? Sorry, the swimming fish are gone.

I agree, back in the days when drinking water came out of a faucet, coca cola came in a glass bottle that you got 10 cents for when you took it back, things were built to last, and groceries came in paper bags. We threw away a lot less stuff. Now people throw everything away, and buy cheap things that don't last and throw them away. It wouldn't take a lot to cut down on waste and use renewable or re-usable products like paper (you can replant trees), glass, etc. The US has become a very wasteful society, look at the gas situation. As soon as the prices came down, everyone forgot about conserving it or increasing the economy of cars.

A few weeks ago I was Google Earthing the Hawaiian Islands Archipelago and came across the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument website at http://hawaiireef.noaa.gov/ I spent several evenings reading about the atolls and the islands. One article specifically addressed the issue of plastics and marine life on the atolls at: http://www.hawaiianatolls.org/research/June2006/albatross_death.php It’s a good read and is written for the general public and is low in technical jargon.

It was disheartening to see that several other island are more plastics-infected than Midway. How can we protect these islands from plastics? Do we need to send frequent plastics-foraging groups. Yet since the birds gather food far away from the island and return with it to feed their young, would that really solve the problem at all.

On a personal note, I never thought I would see the day I would say this, but I must confess that I have actually found one piece of legislation that I agree with President Bush on, and that is the creation of the Northwest Marine National Monument and the efforts being made on Midway Atoll to remove it’s toxic waste left over from the military. So, here it goes, “Thank you, President Bush.” (Just don’t tell anyone in Utah that I actually admitted this.)

While I lived on Midway we did see lots of plastic. It collects there. I did also see dead birds. There is no doubt the NWHI is the center of the vortex for marine trash. It's not good in any sense. I did see staged pictures - like the one just posted (this one may or may not be staged). That's not to say birds do not eat disgarded lighters or other plastic- they do. But "volunteers" and scientists will find a dead bird and put those things in the cavity to make a picture more "effective", and pass it along for shock value.

That may or may not be true Bamboo. We would have to take them at their word until someone or something could disprove their claims. It wouldn’t be prudent to assume they were defrauding us without something more than the possibly that they could have done it.

As it stands now it would appear that the plastic was indeed found in the bird and counted just as they claimed. I don't see any reason to not take them at their word, do you?

Yes I do see a reason to not take them at their word- I have actual knowledge of photo's that were staged at and around Midway and nearby islands. That means I saw with volunteers and "scientists" (I use "" to means that they could be F&W employees,graduate students or scientists) staging photo's. It was a open activity- they did not care I knew what they were doing. It was much tougher to find photographic dead animals than to "recreate" a chick or bird that dies from plastic ingestion. I spent a year on Midway and have been to Lisianski and Kure.