A floating device created to clean up plastic from the ocean is finally doing its job, organizers say
Good news!
"The Netherlands-based nonprofit the Ocean Cleanup says its latest prototype was able to capture and hold debris ranging in size from huge, abandoned fishing gear, known as "ghost nets," to tiny microplastics as small as 1 millimeter.
"Today, I am very proud to share with you that we are now catching plastics," Ocean Cleanup founder and CEO Boyan Slat said at a news conference in Rotterdam.
"The Ocean Cleanup system is a U-shaped barrier with a net-like skirt that hangs below the surface of the water. It moves with the current and collects faster moving plastics as they float by. Fish and other animals will be able to swim beneath it.
"It's been deployed in "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch" -- a concentration of trash located between Hawaii and California that's about double the size of Texas, or three times the size of France.
"Ocean Cleanup plans to build a fleet of these devices, and predicts it will be able to reduce the size of the patch by half every five years."
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What about the kelp beds that are a prime habitat and food source?
moosepucky
Level 7
Nov 19, 2019
1
@mosepucky
I am not an environmental scientist. I assume kelp beds are choked with plastics, too.
The oceans spiral like a drain, the center of which is stationary. This is where most of the ocean's small organisms are. In the Atlantic it's called the sargasso sea (can't remember what it is called in the Pacific). There is no wind and no sea currents, just a giant grocery store of nutrients.
What they are trying to do is commendable. Whether it will help or hinder ocean life will have to be monitored closely.
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