46% of the plastic is from fishing nets. Other types of fishing gear account for a substantial portion of the remainder:
A comprehensive new study by Slat’s team of scientists, published in Scientific Reports Thursday, concluded that the 79,000 tons was four to 16 times larger than has been previously estimated for the patch. The study also found that fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets.
The pacific rubbish patch represents a very small amount of the plastic in the worlds oceans. Most of the plastic is in the form of microplastics and non-buoyant plastics. Greenpeace did a study in 2019 that placed discarded fishing gear (not just nets) at 10% of the errant plastic in the ocean. I will grant you that the pacific rubbish patch is largely discarded fishing gear but it is much less of a problem compared to other forms of plastic.
I think it gets a lot of attention because it is the area of most obvious danger to large marine life (despite the fact that microplastics in the food chain are just as dangerous to whales/dolphins etc.) and it also provides people with a scapegoat (i.e. fishermen & women) that makes them feel better about themselves so they can pretend that they aren't just as big of a contributor the global problem.
I watched that documentary on Netflix, I think it was (forgot the name) and I thought the same thing. All that "info" is only good for people to say "welp, that makes me blameless!". And I even had a moment after where I was like "fuck fisherman" but then it hit me. We still need to do our part.
It gets attention because it makes for good PR when they can release pictures like this. Its the same reason they release pictures of baby seals when they protest the seal hunt in Canada even though baby seals aren't whats being culled.
These folks, like peta, like the conveniently misrepresent the facts for their own fundraising efforts.
Edit: Majority almost always refers to an absolute majority of >50%. If OP means a plurality or relative majority, they should specify that. Not doing so is intentionally misleading.
Congratulations, but instead googling the minimum to confirm your side, maybe Google "majority vs plurality" and get back to me.
Majority has multiple definitions, a simple, inexact definition in common English, and a more exact definition in poli-sci, math, and engineering.
Of course, all of this is an irrelevant aside since as op clarified, fishing equipment constitutes over 50% of the trash, making it the majority by any definition.
Wikipedia specifically separates the two understandings, with majority (and more specifically simple majority) meaning a subset with more than half of the sets elements. The subset of apples is not more than half of the set. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/majority
That definition doesn't work though because I could just as easily say from your example that a majority of fruits are not apples and I would be just as correct because the sum of oranges and bananas is the greater number compared to apples.
Being wrong is embarrassing, but you are coming across as a real cocky piece of shit and it's a really simple word you can't understand. That word is used constantly in professional and scientific settings and it absolutely never means what you think it does. It means more than half. up votes and down votes and a three word definition you found on the internet and don't understand can't make you right.
Bruh I literally googled the oxford definition, it’s in the fucking dictionary.
Ofc I’m coming off as cocky, like 5 people came out of the woodworks to ‘correct’ this dude on his grammatically correct use of the word ‘majority’. They corrected him without even looking up the definition.
Majority, quite literally means ‘the bigger number’.
Majority means more than half. If there are more than two categories, and it's the largest, I believe the correct terms would be plurality or relative majority.
he used the % for just the nets, and misquoted the NatGeo article, but more than half of all garbage is indeed fishing gear which includes the nets which are 46% of the total by themselves
The study also found that fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets.
We all know that majority almost always means absolute majority. If that's not what OP meant, they should specify that they meant relative majority or plurality. Or, they could have included a percentage.
It's possible to technically be correct but also be intentionally misleading.
When does majority almost always mean absolute? We call pluralities in politics and racial percentages majorities all the time because nobody uses plurality.
Fair enough! I always think of majority as 50+1% and plurality as the most out of all options but you’re right, simple majority is the same as plurality
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u/swinging_ship Aug 12 '21
46% of plastics in the pacific garbage patch are from fishing gear. That is the majority and that is a problem.