LA Times flash series on ocean threats

[monty]

I haven't seen this metioned yet:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-series,0,7842752.special

it's way too flash-heavy for my flash-crippled laptop, but it looks interesting... it's also painfully slow with my cable modem.

Memorable quote from one photo caption: "East of Midway and the Hawaiian Islands is what is perhaps the world's largest garbage dump: a floating, rotating patch of trash-laden water about twice the size of Texas."

Sigh. I did a beach cleanup last year, and didn't make much of a dent in the huge amout of plastic flotsam and jetsum that washed up.

 

[sorseress]

I just finished reading/watching it. Sickening. Much of what we were working on in Md was tryng to reduce nutrient load, but much of the watershed is rural with septic systems, and the advent of the McMansions with the 5 acre lawns, all of which got fertilized, added new problems. Add to that the chicken farms on the Eastern shore (which caused pfisteria) and it's no wonder the Chesapeake is a mess. Very little of the problem there is from point source pollution. It was almost all non-point source. Most of the major point source polluters had been cleaned up quite a while ago, but it's very difficult to make any progress when there's so much uncontrolled growth, and so many clueless homeowners.

 

[erich orser]

Sickening and distressing. Everybody ought to read this series. This is truly horrifying stuff, ferociously infuriating.

 

[tonmo]

Great report -- it raises a lot of questions. Thanks for posting it here.