A free-standing, waste-trapping floating dam could revolutionize ocean clean-up | Hacker News Reader

A free-standing, waste-trapping floating dam could revolutionize ocean clean-up

qz.com

75 pointsrfreytag24 comments

A similar item is Baltimore's "Mr Trash Wheel" [1] which in one year has kept over 350 tons of trash from going into the harbor. It even has it's own twitter account [2].

Something like the trash wheel is most effective at choke points where a bunch of trash is getting funneled into a fairly narrow space versus the open ocean, but it's amazing how much trash it has kept out of the harbor and thereby the ocean.

1. http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/

2. https://twitter.com/MrTrashWheel

The trash wheel is great, so much garbage used to clog the harbor after it rained, now there's barely any.

The beach near us over the last 20 years or so has gone from having a bit of plastic and wood washed up, to having more plastic than seaweed. It's amazing how much of it is rope and net. There is so much broken tiny bits of rope that it almost looks like a light dusting of snow some days. It's crazy.

Last week there were a whole bunch of milk bottles washed up and the crows were pecking holes in them and drinking the milk.

We also get plastic pallets washing up, they are about 1.5m sq.

But so many nets and rope.

Yeah I've seen something similar on beaches around Half Moon Bay, and in the Don Edwards National Reserve. I started keeping plastic bags and gloves in my car, that way I can pick some of it out before i head back to my car.

Yup, same deal here on the shore of the Gulf of Maine. Lots of plastic trash, both from the fishing industry and from the land. Plastic boxes, bottles, bags, beach whistles (tampon applicators), as well as hunks of rope and net.

I have trashbags in my trunk. I also have a trash grabber; it lets me get more stuff for a given investment of time.

I like this floating dam idea. Hope it works. Hope the rubbish they scavenge can be dealt with safely.

The switch from natural rope to plastic would be the main cause. I wonder if natural rope could be made as strong as modern plastics that way it would break down once in the ocean.

I know fishermen prefer plastic since it lasts longer. Even lobster traps are plastic these days no more artsy wooden traps they're only for the tourists to buy.

This only collects the visible pollution. I don't have any numbers, but I can imagine that the invisible pollution is much worse. This is a noble project, but I hope it will not end up just washing away our guilt.

Currently we are doing nothing to clean the oceans. Floating plastic is very very bad, it get churned up against rocks and cliffs to become tiny bits that end up in the food chain.

Go to any beach and look along the shoreline to see tonnes of broken plastic.

There was a TV programme they showed last month where a scientist said that they had not found a single fish that didn't have plastic in its gut. They had examined thousands.

According to what I've gathered from previous HN discussions on the same subject, oceans are self-cleaning - garbage will slowly wash ashore, so if theoretically nobody would throw garbage in the seas anymore, the oceans would be clean in some years [1].

This raises the doubt that instead of focusing on directly cleaning the waters, effort should be put into not polluting the seas in first place (cleaning shores would be consequential). But focusing on the cause rather than the symptoms is not exactly a forte of human behavior.

[1] http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-pl...

I see no reason not to attack the problem from both ends at once.

that would make sense given unlimited/non-competing resources, but if the resources (money, people, awareness, legislative effort) available to solve the problem are limited, it is wasteful to use them for something which doesn't work rather than something that would.

(I do not know if the specific thing works or not, just pointing out that "why not both" is not always a good approach)

Especially if a beach covered in plastic is the best possible advertisement for a solid, well-informed approach to helping the environment :)

You have to start somewhere. Gathering the surface waste will definitely have a positive, effect.

http://ocean.si.edu/slideshow/laysan-albatrosses%E2%80%99-pl...

I'm a volunteer at their science research team.

> This only collects the visible pollution. I don't have any numbers, but I can imagine that the invisible pollution is much worse.

So far our research points to the opposite (which surprised us, too)[1]. The larger pieces do slowly break down, becoming harder to catch, so we feel we have to be fast to catch as much as possible. You are right we cannot catch everything.

> This is a noble project, but I hope it will not end up just washing away our guilt.

So do we! (Raising awareness to mitigate the problem at the source is one of our goals, but we also feel that's not enough on itself because of how much is already there.)

[1] http://www.theoceancleanup.com/blog/show/item/the-ocean-clea...

Not clear from the article or linked press release how wildlife isn't caught up in the cleanup. Would also be interesting to know how small an item it will clean.

http://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology.html gives more information.

but there is floating wildlife too, no?

like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war

On a smaller scale this Indigogo campaign, the SeaBin project, is trying to do something similar:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cleaning-the-oceans-one-m...

http://www.seabinproject.com/

The seabin is just a pump and filter. Sure, it's great that some one is cleaning the ocean, but it's not exactly a revolutionary idea.

Seabin is incredibly inefficient. Its relatively low volume, depends on a pumping system, and requires someone to periodically empty the net. Great idea, but really only practical for a wealthy individual with a dock or small marina.

In the past, I have seen similar schemes questioned on grounds of:

- tethering, they likely need to be anchored in shallow water (<100m) to reduce expensive anchoring gear and potential entanglement,

- high wave states, what will happens to the booms and collected plastic during storms? Particularly in shallow waters where waves rear up.

I imagine testing in the Pacific would address the first, and in the North Sea for the second. But testing in Dutch lakes may not help assess either. I don't question the need for such a solution tho, hopes it works.

It seems the ocean cleanup plan been afloat for awhile.

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/12/16/391137...

http://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-clea...

I'm not sure why Quartz said "lakes", maybe lakes were also used but most important were scale tests in controlled basins such as that at MARIN.

http://www.theoceancleanup.com/blog/show/item/ocean-cleanup-...

This seems very much like a variant of oil booms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_%28containment%29 ) which have been field tested for years in oil spills to pretty good effect. Something like this, which is mostly passive, if it collects 90% of the plastic will still cut out a significant amount of pollution from the ocean. We can worry about the other 10% with another pass, or further developments.

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