Fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear
https://web.archive.org/web/20200723015200/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/Open linkView original on slrpnk.net118
Comments6
But, but straws?
Maybe straws are more the small pacific trash heap type?
How is this possible given the rivers of plastic flowing out of Asian rivers? Seems like maybe a detectability issue.
My thought too. This is saying that at least 73% of the garbage patch is the fishing industries fault. I'm sure they contribute a lot but that's a lot a lot. Sounds like someone is trying to shift blame.
I think more of a “coherency” issue – nets and fishing gear catch and tangle and clump and knot whereas something like bottles just bounce off each other – so unless the other plastics have become entangled in the fishing gear they don’t get counted …
also worth noting, National Geographic is now owned by Disney so coverage of certain issues might be a little “adjusted” …