ROVs Discover Deep Sea Trash

An anonymous reader writes "Deep beneath the ocean's waves, strange creatures such as rockfish and gorgonian coral thrive in the icy depths. Yet there's something else you'll find if you go searching beneath the sea: trash, and lots of it. Researchers have discovered that our trash is accumulating in the deep sea, particularly in Monterey Canyon off of the coast of California. Scientists knew that trash was affecting shallower depths--about 1,000 feet beneath the water. Yet they were unsure whether the effects extended to the truly deep parts of the ocean that reached up to 13,000 feet. They decided that there was only one way to find out: look for themselves."

Re:it'll be there for a while, too

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Perhaps you might want to delay spending money on utopian projects with no obvious short term (less then a century?) benefits before you can, for example, provide healthcare to your fellow compatriots? If it indeed doesn't decompose, it's going to be stable for a while. Not dumping more stuff seems like a good proposition, but what you're suggesting would be very costly, time-consuming, and the net result would be...you know...a big pile of trash you would have to put somewhere?

The bias might be in your interpretation...

[Camael]

...because they did address the points you made in the source article.

First, the trash doesn't seem to "accumulate" on the sea floor, but appears to get buried over time, removing it from the ecosystem.

They specifically admitted this in the article. The specific quote reads : "A lot of it gets buried by underwater landslides and sediment movement. Some of it may also be carried into deeper water, farther down the canyon."

Furthermore, they haven't actually shown significant negative effects.

Which the study also admitted. They even pointed out that the rubbish was sometimes benefited the marine life. The specific quote reads : "Other effects on marine life were more subtle. For example, debris in muddy-bottom areas was often used as shelter by seafloor animals, or as a hard surface on which animals anchored themselves. Although such associations seem to benefit the individual animals involved, they also reflect the fact that marine debris is creating changes in the existing natural biological communities."

I think that it is unfair for you to accuse these researchers of telling lies and being biased.