Are we doing something wrong to this planet ?

[Roddy Hays]

When I first saw these pictures, it brought back some memories of Midway that I'd forgotten. Once a month or so the island personnel who were so inclined would take bags and do a shore-line clean-up, very much for the purpose of making sure plastic was not ingested by immature birds. At the time you'd probably have assumed, like me, that the birds would be the main victims of the refuse.

Since then, I've thought a bit more, and the other day I wrote to a friend :

".....if we see results like this on subjects we can see and count in-hand, what is the damage out of sight on species we do not liaise with so readily?

How many fish, cetaceans, turtles and other birds die out of sight ?

Everything you see on those photos was regurgitated by an adult bird. How many adult birds die ? It would be interesting to see if the the number of abandoned chicks at Midway was rising - those whose parents never make it back to the island.

......... there is nothing [out of sight of authority] to regulate the amount of cigarette-lighters and bottle-tops people throw overboard. I remember at Midway looking long and hard at the amount of Bic-type lighters we picked up. That and plastic netting needles, though I see none of those in the pics. The sheer number of lighters was amazing. There must be an awful lot of smokers out on the high seas. They did seem to go hand in hand with a large quantity of Suntory whiskey bottles......"

The general consensus at the time amongst us on the island was that the vast majority of the rubbish washed ashore came from Asian fishing boats. Tuna long-liners, pair trawlers, squid boats (of which there are a great many - but which you will never hear about, though you will smell one easily enough if you are downwind) and other assorted piscatorial pursuers - lots of them. There's very little commercial shipping traffic mid-Pacific, so I guess our beliefs would still stand scrutiny.

The bottom line is if the rubbish is coming from those who are fishing the oceans to a standstill, a couple of thousand dead albatrosses every now and again certainly won't make them cry. Don't forget, these are the same sort of people who were discovered recently gluing transponders to the backs of birds so they could track the movements of them, and thus the tuna shoals.

[Questsportfishing]

People need to wake up to what 'we' do!

Offshore Ft.Lauderdale we get what I call 'chipper plastic' weed lines they are all chopped up pieces of floating and suspended plastic chips makes you sick to your stomach to see this stuff! we have the gulf stream that runs through the Florida straights here so our beaches don't see that much garbage but it is there.

I actually get people on my boats that get MAD at me because I tell them not to dash their garbage overboard..
I have also taken people to places like Cat Cay and watched little brat kids dash down their bottle tops bottle wrappers and such on the ground .. while someone is working on the landscaping not 20 yards away...

'IT' has everything to do with education! just like our oil we are still running through it at an alarming rate with no regards to the future...

thanks for posting..

[scattered_grass]

I don't disagree that we as humans, act irresponsibly when it comes to the environment. I, like many others, have been guilty on occasion of not properly disposing of waste.

With that being said, the first thing that popped into my head when seeing those pictures was that these photos were staged by an enviro group to support their cause.

Kind of like the "vandalism" that takes place in the turtle and bird areas on the Outer Banks. I think environmentalists will go to great and even dishonest lengths to support their cause.

Maybe that's just me being the skeptic that I am....

[alex n]

I dont even let people on my boat throw cigarettes in the water , in my opinion if you litter in the ocean you have no respect for it. That dead bird by the way is a baby that never left the nest , all the plastic in its gut was brought to it by it's mother as food, and was put right down it's throat. The mother's stupidity does not get passed on in the gene pool, natural selection at work

[Patudo]

Apart from not throwing plastic into the ocean - which most of us already avoid doing - what else can we do?

[WAHOONBOX]

WE ARE ALL GUILTY.

JUST THINK OF ALL THE PIECES OF LITTLE PLASTIC GRUB TAILS THAT ARE BITTEN OFF WHILE FISHING FOR TROUT, DRUM , FLOUNDER, TARPON, BONEFISH, ETC ETC AND THEN SWALLOWED BY FISH , BIRDS & ALL AQUATICS....JUST THINK OF ALL THE PLASTIC SKIRTS THAT GET CHEWED OFF FROM ARTIFICIAL LURES THAT GO DRIFTING INTO THE WATER FOR ALL MARINE LIFE TO CHEW ON....JUST THINK ABOUT ALL THE FISHING LEAD WE SINK TO THE BOTTOM FROM WHATEVER REASON....

JUST THINK ABOUT ALL THE CIGARETTE BUTTS THAT PEOPLE FLING OVERBOARD OR OUT THEIR CAR WINDOWS EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES....JUST THINK ABOUT ALL THE HELIUM BALLONS THAT ARE SET FREE INTO THE OZONE AT MOST MAJOR SPORTING EVENTS AND THEY FIND THEIR WAY TO THE NORTH CAROLINA COAST (BALLONS WERE THE NUMBER ONE ITEM SORTED OUT DURING AN ENVIRO-CLEANUP ON CAPE LOOKOUT SEASHORE)

I WATCHED ONE DAY AS A COLLEGIATE STUDY GROUP RELEASED 150 OR SO 2" BABY YELLOW BELLIED SLIDER TURTLES ON ATLANTIC BEACH.....THEY WERE SACRIFICING THESE FRESH WATER TURTLES TO THE EVER PRESENT GHOST CRABS ON THE DUNES.....THEY WANTED TO OBSERVE HOW THE CRABS GRABBED, KILLED AND ATE THE TURTLES IN ORDER TO PRESERVE THEIR FAVORITE SONS THE LEATHERBACK AND LOGGERS....

DID ANYONE STAND UP WITH PROTEST FOR THE SLIDER TURTLE?....HELL NO....THEY WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT SAVING A SEA TURTLE THAT ONE CAN LEGALLY EAT IN BAHAMIAN RESTRAUNTS

WHAT ABOUT THE BILGE PUMPS ON YOUR BOAT AND MY BOAT? ...PUMPING OUT SLUDGE PARTICLES AND OIL AND ANY OTHER CRAP THAT FINDS IT'S WAY THERE.....HAS ANYONE EVER SPILLED AN OUNCE OF FUEL WHILE REFUELING AND THEN QUICKLY STARTED A FUEL REMOVAL CLEAN-UP PROCESS???.....NOPE! ......WE JUST SHOOT SOME DAWN DETERGENT OUT ON IT AND COVER IT UP....



WHAT ABOUT SIMPLETON COASTAL TOWNS LIKE ATLANTIC BEACH NC THAT USE THE ARCHAIC SEPTIC TANK SYSTEM OF BURIED CEMENT BLOCKS IN THE SAND THAT FILTER IT'S WAY TO THE OCEAN AND SOUND JUST A FEW YARDS AWAY?

WE ALL TALK THE TALK BUT WE NEVER DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT....


SOME VERY VERY VALID POINTS HERE IN THIS THREAD....THANKS FOR SHARING.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Thanks for the posting, Roddy.

It all has to start with each one of us. We never discarded trash, cigarette butts, or anything else on my boats. Everything went into garbage cans and was disposed of after we returned. My dad taught me that during my first days on the water.

And the birds? Just ask Grim Ripper about ALL of the things that we humans are doing to the oceans of the world, including but far from limited to all of the sea bird nestlings that die when their parents don't return to feed them after being drowned from getting hooked on longline hooks that they get while they are being deployed. I have read that this has endangered certain oceanic bird species already, including certain albatross'.

We can police ourselves, if we choose to. I don't know what we can do about the commercials. You can talk all you want to about enviro sabotage, but both Ripper and I saw the ugly consequences of the pursue seiners discarding the nylon mesh bags that carry the salt that they use to preserve their fish into the water. You wouldn't believe the numbers of baby turtles that get wrapped up and cut up and drowned by those damned bags. They obviously mistook them for the jellyfish that they feed on. The chapter "Little One" tells of just that with a truly endangered baby leatherback that we tried to save, but couldn't.

Disrupt the natural balance of the oceans to the point that we knock it askew and it will destroy itself one day. And if and when that day comes, it won't just be about fish and fishing...it will be about human life on this planet!