The Ocean is Broken

[3327]

I saw some people comment on a thread similar to this yesterday called, "Sailor says pacific is lifeless form Japan onwards for 3k Miles". I am guessing it is the same gentleman in this article and this is the full article. Some comments there were skeptical and suggested they had been at sea and hadn't caught anything or had not "seen any whales or dolphins". Let me say that there are countless counter arguments but try to view it from another angle. Lets say you are a developer and you do that most of your life day in and day out for years and years - just as this man sails the seas. After years you will have certain observations that will be a culmination of your experience and accumulated knowledge for doing that job for many years... And perhaps young developers will not understand it or will question how you came to such a conclusion, although it is evident to you and experienced peers like yourself. You can't put it into a white paper because of several reason's like time, money, and test conducting. This is like that, its experience and years of wisdom that are talking. Maybe a state will fund a study which will cost 10 million bucks and 5 years to do statistical fish and trash sampling to confirm it later on but without doing such things in the immediate term such a keen observation has and should have the weight and impact it deserves, by that I mean not being brushed off as there is not data and " I didn't see fish either", its deeper than that and the approach should be constructing rather than deconstructing.

[300bps]

I am in favor of environmental causes but you seem to discount at least one possibility. The person could be either exaggerating or outright lying. People love to exaggerate problems. The other day a user told me that a particular synchronization froze for over 45 minutes doing nothing right in the middle of it. I sent her the timestamped log file that showed there was no pause in the synchronization and that the entire process took less than 15 minutes. This type of thing is very common.

In addition to commonly exaggerating problems, some people lie to further an agenda. Maybe an employee thinks their nephew deserves a shot at developing the company website so they become hypercritical of everything you do. Or maybe a sailor with subjective memories just doesn't like what fishing boats are doing.

In any case, anecdotal reports should be taken as a call for further study, not as a call to draw conclusions.

[ams6110]

Even an entire human lifetime is an eyeblink in the ebb and flow of the ocean environment. No matter what experience a person has, his own observations mean nothing, or rather, are insufficient to assign any causality other than natural variability. Most of the species that have ever lived in the oceans (or anywhere else on the planet) are now extinct, and this happened long before humans had any influence.

[cjensen]

This is nonsense. A classic case of mistaking an anecdote for data.

There's lots of year-to-year variation in currents which affect life in the ocean. In turn, the birds which depend on seafood vary tremendously.

For example, two years ago Pelagic Cormorants had tremendous problems with their food source off of Northern California. So the Cormorants moved around seeking food. Santa Clara County, which normally goes years without seeing this species, saw dozens.

If you want to find out if something is actually going on, go talk to the ornithologists who monitor the nesting sites for the seabirds.

[SeanDav]

or it may be the absolute truth - which you are dismissing as anecdotal.

In either case it is worth keeping an open mind, because if it is true, then we are in serious trouble. Sticking your head in the sand and saying "no data, no data" is not useful even if at the end of the day you are correct. When the consequences of being right or wrong (depending on your point of view) are so dire, it is worth investigating further and certainly not dismissing out of hand.

[migrantgeek]

This article is definitely lacking data but if you want to get the public's ear, you need anecdotes. Few people perk up with a zip full of spreadsheets.

Anecdotes are fine though they should at least be linked to data supporting the argument.

The problem for me is that after reading the article, I still have no idea if the ocean as a whole is losing its ability to sustain human life.

I'm pretty ignorant in this area and unfortunately this article does nothing to increase my knowledge on the subject.

[scrumper]

This was the most depressing bit for me:

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

I think that's a fairly neat example of a weakness of modern environmentalism: an obsession with CO2 over everything else.

[D9u]

The US, and other nations, have nuclear powered ships for war. Why not use these ships for peace, and try cleaning the ocean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/...

[angersock]

because nuclear

god

its like you dont even understand clean energy

[rurabe]

It's really really sad, and no less ironic, that in the midst of this government shutdown, particularly with the zealotry from the tea party about the evils of government, that a problem which so obviously needs addressing, and should naturally and probably only can be solved by governments, goes unaddressed like this. Surely we must all be able to agree on this. What is government for at all, if not to harness our collective will to solve problems that economics deem impossible to solve by individuals?

[logicchains]

It's interesting to see the statement that a problem like this can 'probably only be solved by governments' when governments so far have completely failed to solve it, and the proposed non-government solutions (such as removing the limitations on the liability of polluters, and allowing those whose health or livelihood has been injured by pollution to sue, potentially by class action) have never even been attempted. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and inspecting a different result." After a few large polluters went bankrupt after multi-billion dollar payouts to fishermen, beachgoers and such, I imagine industry as a whole would be more wary about pollution. Without limited liability - limited by government, I should add - BP would almost certainly be bankrupt by now. As would whichever company owned the nuclear plant that leaked in Japan.

[300bps]

First of all, the shutdown ended so we are not in its "midst". Second of all, what does the US shutdown have to do with the waters of coastal Japan?

[Keyframe]

This is extremely unsettling and sad. The question is, is there anything we can do both on micro and macro level?

[rurabe]

I would guess on a micro level the best thing you can do is recycle, reducing the amount of refuse that ends up in landfills and often times out at sea. A lot of it from coastal areas ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it's not like storing it on land is awesome either.

The problem really is that even decently sized macro action can be largely negated by economic freeriders. Unless some body like the UN or US sets out to enforce universal cooperation with agreements on pollution, or fishing, whole states that don't follow the regulations will continue to take advantage. Witness the failed Kyoto Protocol, which had 191/192 nations in agreement, but the very worst polluters (read: the US) who refused to be party to it.

[mkingston]

As the other person who replied only really addressed pollution, I'll add that you should stop eating fish. And if that's asking too much, catch it yourself. And if that's asking too much, there are definitely operators out there who are concerned about sustainability, you should insist on purchasing your fish from independently certified sustainable sources

[highace]

Fortunately once we've sucked the earth dry of it's resources and die out ourselves, it should eventually recover.

[blahedo]

Why oh why do interface designers ever think it's a good idea to hijack the browser's keyboard controls, especially if it's only to make them do nothing?

[ColinWright]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579760

[samdunne]

Noticed right after I posted. Gave it an upvote

[grok2]

It would have been great confirmation of all that he writes about to see some photos from his trip -- specially of the infamous garbage patch.

[Zancarius]

There is no such thing as the garbage patch[1]; any such pictures[2] you may have seen are of other areas that are certainly far more polluted (it doesn't change the tragedy of it or the disgusting nature of such things, but it does change the premise of the argument).

There is, however, a significant problem with regards to the micro-plastics and other such small particles floating about in great number. The problem is that no one knows how these are affecting the ecology of the oceans on a large scale[2].

[1] http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/how-big-gre...

[2] http://io9.com/5911969/lies-youve-been-told-about-the-pacifi...

[jws]

You can't photograph the garbage patch in any meaningful way. It isn't visible. There are more fine plastic particles per cubic meter of water and you are more likely than normal to happen a cross a bit of floating plastic, but a picture doesn't tell the story.

If you have seen pictures of solid garbage on the water, you are probably looking at a large bay in a metropolitan area, say Manila.

[dicroce]

The good news is that apparently the Japanese aren't having sex anymore, so maybe the ocean around Japan will soon get a bit of a break:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579294

[vijayr]

It was like sailing through a garbage tip

:(

As an individual, what are the things we could do (other than using less plastic), so we don't contribute to this mess?

[halfcat]

The ocean is broken? Sounds like aliens to me...

[leokun]

This comment is going to get downvoted for meta-ness and probably because everyone disagrees with me but I just have to speak my mind: I'd like a version of hacker news sans the constant hysteria all the time.