The Marmot’s Hole

16 Comments

1. judge judy
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 9:12 am | Permalink

   I met some Cornell people in biomimetics yesterday to talk about their sustainable innovation initiatives and mining this field of plastics is on their radar. At some point in the future it will become less expensive to go out and extract the plastics accumulated in these vortices than to produce them on land.

2. Brendon Carr (Korea Law Blog)
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 9:26 am | Permalink

   I was thinking the exact same thing. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure — a giant collection of hydrocarbons? Someday there will be people mining that. Su-weet!

3. William George
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 9:38 am | Permalink

   Ah the ocean… our source of food and our toilet all at the same time.

4. Sonagi
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 10:35 am | Permalink

   So we don’t need to bother with recycling after all.

5. Railwaycharm
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 10:47 am | Permalink

   How difficult would it be to build a vessel to go out and harvest all of those petroleum products floating around in the deep blue?

6. Bipolar Mindscrew
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 11:23 am | Permalink

   Haha… in the meantime, wouldn’t some of this plastic soup be degrading or breaking down somehow and causing some poisons to leech into our oceans?

7. bumfromkorea
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 11:45 am | Permalink

   “Someday there will be people mining that. Su-weet!”

   Lol… has anyone seen ‘Waterworld’ starring Kevin Costner?

8. pixel
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 11:52 am | Permalink

   Ew. That is so very nasty. And just in time for Earth Day (22nd).

9. Big B
   Posted April 20, 2008 at 12:00 pm | Permalink

   There is a good report about this area on Vice Magazine’s TV website vbs.tv (report name:toxic). It shows some people sailing out to the area and all the garbage that’s there. Gross.

10. Dram_man
    Posted April 20, 2008 at 9:05 pm | Permalink

    Parts of this are really g-damn funny! I love this line of thought:

    Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: “The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States.”

    So they are not going to fan the flames of alarmism on the this topic? Don’t bet your Greenpeace coffee mug:

    Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: “It moves around like a big animal without a leash.” When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. “The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic,”

    Of course its not an island of plastic, more like a huge “Godzilla of Plastic” threatening to projectile vomit on Diamond Head. RUN! Not only that its an old, old, sea monster:

    Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. “Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere,” said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.

    The sea monster’s diet consists of birds:

    plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds

    And of course its ultimate plan is to bring down the human race that created it:

    These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. “What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It’s that simple,” said Dr Eriksen.

    What I really wanted to know is if Dr. Eriksen is in the pocket of Big Beef. All this talked about a polluted sea makes me prefer that Kansas City Strip even more!

    So in summary, they do not want to alarm anybody, but-RUN ITS THE OLD, VOMITING, BIRD FEASTING PLASTIC MONSTER OF THE SEA!

11. Wedge
    Posted April 21, 2008 at 12:01 am | Permalink

    Dram: You be the scriptwriter. I know a director who’d love to do this. Let’s call it “The Creature from the Black Sea.” Dennis Quaid will play University of Hawaii’s Professor Creepy, oceanographer and leading authority on jetsam (flotsam is so last century–this is going to be about jetsam) who fruitlessly tries to warn the bikini-clad college co-eds during their luau on the beach.

    Just as the island of Oahu is about to be chundered upon by the huge monster, a large ship emblazoned with the words “Carr Enterprises” shows up to recycle the monstrosity and make a mint doing it. And the world lives happily ever after, at least until the sequel.

12. judge judy
    Posted April 21, 2008 at 7:43 am | Permalink

    another interesting sea-based movie would be about the massive gas hydrates off the east coast of korea and how their development will play into the dynamics of the koreas and japan. i wonder how much of this came up on lmb’s recent visit.

13. judge judy
    Posted April 21, 2008 at 7:46 am | Permalink

    oopsy. i see that this actually did come up during the visit.

14. ziffel
    Posted April 22, 2008 at 9:50 am | Permalink

    A little closer to Korea, the mounting crap littering the West/Yellow Sea should give pause.

    One time, a friend found an out-of-the way beach on Anmyeon-Do. Was raving about how beautiful it was, and we just had to go back and visit it.

    We did, and I was treated to the sight of washed up oil cans, tires, computer monitors, syringes, you name it, in addition to the usual plastic bags and beer cans.

    I was shocked, shocked, shocked(!) to discover that a healthy proportion of the stuff was obviously washed over from China.

    Didn’t end up swimming that day.

15. Sonagi
    Posted April 22, 2008 at 9:57 am | Permalink

    @#14:

    While living in Qingdao, China, which borders the Yellow Sea, I knew a Korean marine biologist doing research at China’s Ocean University. He told me that the Yellow Sea is very polluted because it is bordered on three sides by land with industrialized cities dumping all kinds of waste into the water. I lived ten minutes from the beach and loved to walk along the shore (wearing shoes, of course!) but never took a dip in the water. Red tide algae blooms were not unusual.

16. judge judy
    Posted April 22, 2008 at 4:28 pm | Permalink

    sounds like the jersey shore back in the early eighties when beaches were shut down due to medical waste washing up on the beach. evidently, they were dumping the stuff less than five miles offshore.

    i can’t even begin to imagine what the yellow sea takes in.