Quote Originally Posted by bmachale View Post
It is mostly trash from Asia. I lived there for three years. I can tell you from experience they are responsible for 98% of the plastic washed out to sea. Good luck getting them to change. They sign treaties that they laugh at and are already breaking before the ink dries. Do all you want here. Wont make a dent in that collection.
The study estimated half of it comes from fishing nets (i.e. commercial fishing) and 20% from the Tōhoku tsunami. As to where the remaining 30% comes from I will leave to the scientists, FNN experts notwithstanding.

Enforcing treaties on open-sea commercial fishing is challenging, to say the least. Fishing gear is lost; whether accidentally or on purpose, it should fall on that industry to monitor, report, and fund the clean-up for it's portion of the mess.

Quote Originally Posted by bmachale View Post
Maybe instead of spending money on studies they use all that money the environmentalists give to politicians and use it to fund a clean up.
Save the rhetoric. The studies are necessary, not only to identify the scope of the problem, but also to fend off the critics who would say that without the studies, any claims about this problem would be baseless and anecdotal (in their cynical, disingenuous minds).

Quote Originally Posted by bmachale View Post
On the bright side. It is a giant kelp paddy. I bet there is more life around that thing than any other open ocean area. If you clean it up you are just destroying the ecosystem that developed around the pile of trash like they do when they blow up old oil rigs teaming with life. Killing all the fish. Hundreds of thousands of them To make it safe for fish?
It's not a kelp paddy. It's a big floating pile of trash. Composed mainly of materials used to kill fish. It is not an ecosystem; it is environmental pollution within an ecosystem. If you have any evidence to back up your bet of the ecological benefits of this pollution, by all means present it.