They seem to have a good shot. Most of their critics were just saying that we need to stop the influx of plastic, like what these folks are doing is detrimental to that process or something. Derp.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Saturday, September 22nd, 2018 3:47pm PDT - promote requested by Mordhaus.

Hmmmm. What makes those people think you can't clean up and litter less at the same time?
Thanks for the promote

Perhaps they think that the ocean is a fucking massive place, that the crap that floats on the surface is just the tip of the iceberg, and that much like the very prominent attemps to clean up oil spills and the like it really does very little except placate our guilt. I mean sure, do both, but come on, human beans don't work like that. Some will litter with a clear conscience if they think somebody is being paid to clean up behind them. I mean, its practically job creaton right!

You're likely correct, that's what they think if they think at all, and that's why we're all totally fucked.

Anyone else think this is one sudden storm away from contributing to the problem?

I love that they are trying and have admirable goals.

I'm somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness. Presumably some of the data that they are going to collect will include retention rates -- if pieces of plastic of various sizes *enter* the C-shaped area, what percentage of them *stay* there until they can be intentionally removed? Also, how often will they become "full" to an extent requiring a tow to shore and offload operation?

The devices themselves seem like they'd actually be quite cheap to produce. Towing and offloading operations will be expensive, particularly in man-hours. Recycling the collected debris crap into plastic products for resale will be low-yield and unsustainable from a purely capitalistic pricing standpoint -- people will only buy that "merch" as a form of contributing to the project; not because the stuff they make will be competitively priced.

However, none of that makes their endeavor not worth doing/trying. Hopefully their retention rates are good enough (not much plastic or any particular size bracket escapes around / under the devices), and they can make enough through selling merch to fund the offload costs and deploy enough devices to meet their goals!

So, after months of issues including plastics both leaving the capture area through the entrance and just going directly under the "curtain", the device has broken catastrophically and was returned to port for repairs today, barely 3 months after deployment. Disappointing.

I'm glad they're trying something, but in reality even working perfectly this device could only clean the ocean surface like a single parking lot vacuum truck could clean and decontaminate the entire mid West. We would need hundreds of thousands of these working 24/7 to make a significant difference, and that would undoubtedly cause new insurmountable problems.

Besides, enormous amounts of plastics have degraded enough that they no longer float at the surface. These devices could never harvest that plastic, and that's the plastic entering the food web at the base, contaminating everything from phytoplankton up.

How right you were. ^