polystyrene fish boxes

[Irish Rover]

These bloody things are a plague on the environment. The fishing season only resumed here in Turkey on 01 September but already they're all over the place. It's not easy to recover them from the sea when single handing and they break up almost immediately when they go ashore on anything except a sandy beach. Just one box breaks into millions of beads easily ingested by fish. Are these still in use in the Europe?

 

[fisherman]

Yes. I thought the same when I was at a fish merchants and a lorry load was delivered. They do get re-used but inevitably are difficult to clean and start to break up, or they end up in city centre restos etc. Should be banned, but they are so good at the job. Any fishing port will have fragments blowing about.

 

[Irish Rover]

I picked up 3 off the beach today where I go to swim. I have them on the boat and my only option is to put them in the bin at the marina which means they'll go to a landfill. Grieves me but I don't know what else to do with them.
These things must be expensive to transport relative to their value.

 

[rotrax]

Until I retired I worked part time for a leading bio-science company, packing their product in special containers for dispatch to customers world wide.

These products arrived from the USA in very strong and dense polystyrene boxes, containing in many cases dry ice or refrigeration ice packs.

I would clean some up and take them to Abingdon Market on a Monday and swop them for a lobster, prawns or fresh fish.

The guy's at Selsey Shellfish loved them and said they lasted better than any others they could get hold of.

I am not surprised-the ex-factory cost for purchase of thousands at a time was 50 US Dollars! That was 8 years ago.

They had to meet strict airfreight transport requirements and be happy with contents weighing over 30 kilos and down to minus 80 degrees C.

So, ones that dont break up are available, but at serious cost.

The company I worked for paid serious money to have them collected and disposed of.

 

[LittleSister]

Will wicker (and reed) baskets make a comeback?

Eco friendly, and lots of work making/repairing them for the sorts of places typically suffering from high unemployment.

 

[scotty123]

Will wicker (and reed) baskets make a comeback?

Eco friendly, and lots of work making/repairing them for the sorts of places typically suffering from high unemployment.

Unhygienic & difficult to clean, perhaps should be replaced by the 'plastic' raffia they make those fancy garden sofas out of, at least they last jetwashing.

 

[fisherman]

Fish quality has been improved a great deal in recent years, all small boats now carry insulated bins which, with sea water slush ice keep fish in top condition. A white fish fillet keeps for 21 days at 1 deg, three days at 10 deg, so maintaining low temp is essential, right up to the point of sale. Unfortunately polyboxes are very good at this.

 

[Irish Rover]

I understand the immediate value of these boxes to the fishing industry but does anyone understand the longer term affects on fishing from the damage being done to our seas and oceans by these and plastics.

 

[fisherman]

I understand the immediate value of these boxes to the fishing industry but does anyone understand the longer term affects on fishing from the damage being done to our seas and oceans by these and plastics.

Of course. Just that some people are litter bugs who happily defile the world, and some of us take care to bag up the bits for landfill. It would be much better if other solutions could be found, as in the cases of air travel and road vehicles, also huge pollution problems.

 

[Irish Rover]

I imagine very few of these are deliberately discarded at sea but they're so light a gentle breeze can blow them overboard when they're empty.

 

[fisherman]

You might be interested to know that nylon netting, often blamed for ghost fishing, is brought ashore, stripped from the ropes, bagged up in builder bags and collected by an outfit that turns it into plastic pallets. Just to point out that we are making efforts to reduce pollution.

 

[fisherman]

I imagine very few of these are deliberately discarded at sea but they're so light a gentle breeze can blow them overboard when they're empty.

They don’t get taken to sea. The insulated bins are robust not disposable.

 

[RupertW]

I imagine very few of these are deliberately discarded at sea but they're so light a gentle breeze can blow them overboard when they're empty.

I’m not so sure - we see a lot of them in the Med and off the Atlantic coast of Morocco and they are nearly always damaged so I think just chucked over at night.

 

[Irish Rover]

I’m not so sure - we see a lot of them in the Med and off the Atlantic coast of Morocco and they are nearly always damaged so I think just chucked over at night.

I pick them up whenever I can including 3 yesterday and the vast majority are clean and in good condition suggesting accidental loss.

 

[fisherman]

I pick them up whenever I can including 3 yesterday and the vast majority are clean and in good condition suggesting accidental loss.

Can't speak for Turkiye.....

 

[asteven221]

What is it with fisherman?

Every place I have been in the world it's nearly always fisherman that ruin the water and shoreline. If it's not polystyrene, it's discarded bits of plastic fishing nets, or bits of engine parts, rubber gloves and all sorts of ropes. Then there is the sundry rubbish they throw overboard as routine. The used engine oil containers. And to top it all off nicely, they destroy the fish stock (and then moan that there are no fish to catch) by over fishing, whilst doing their level best to destroy the sea bed by dragging huge lumps of metal along it to scoop up a few shellfish.

And then they moan constantly that they are some sort of special case and should be cared for and protected by governments, as if they were sacred to humanity. More like we need protected from fisherman!

To complete my rant (sorry) - they make sailing in dark a gamble on actually getting to the destination unscathed (at least here in the Clyde) with lobster pot markers (specially small, so nobody can see them) seemingly in all the routes we need to use.

For some strange reason my autopilot insists on going out it's way to to aim straight at them during the day. I assume therefore it's trying to do the same at night, so that's kinda screwed up my winter night trips to Rothesay!

:ambivalence:

 

[Irish Rover]

What is it with fisherman?

Every place I have been in the world it's nearly always fisherman that ruin the water and shoreline. If it's not polystyrene, it's discarded bits of plastic fishing nets, or bits of engine parts, rubber gloves and all sorts of ropes. Then there is the sundry rubbish they throw overboard as routine. The used engine oil containers. And to top it all off nicely, they destroy the fish stock (and then moan that there are no fish to catch) by over fishing, whilst doing their level best to destroy the sea bed by dragging huge lumps of metal along it to scoop up a few shellfish.

And then they moan constantly that they are some sort of special case and should be cared for and protected by governments, as if they were sacred to humanity. More like we need protected from fisherman!

To complete my rant (sorry) - they make sailing in dark a gamble on actually getting to the destination unscathed (at least here in the Clyde) with lobster pot markers (specially small, so nobody can see them) seemingly in all the routes we need to use.

For some strange reason my autopilot insists on going out it's way to to aim straight at them during the day. I assume therefore it's trying to do the same at night, so that's kinda screwed up my winter night trips to Rothesay!

:ambivalence:

I can't speak for the Clyde but here on the Aegean I'd have no doubt that recreational boaters are responsible for most of the rubbish we see floating in the sea or littering the beaches. Actually commercial fishing is prohibited for 5 months in the summer and yet I see more rubbish in the summer rather than the winter and I boat 12 months of the year. Over fishing is a problem everywhere but it's hardly up to individual fishermen to give up their livelihoods - some concerted international action will need to be taken at inter-governmental level to compensate fishermen for decommissioning their vessels. Along the Aegean coast all fishing is effectively inshore fishing because of the closeness of Turkey and Greece and there's no doubt stocks have been decimated but still I can't blame the fishermen who's only other choice is to starve.

 

[PilotWolf]

Slight thread drift..

California has a law that prevents restaurants from providing a plastic straw unless asked for, so most places now provide paper straws that are useless and often don't even last the meal before needing replacement. The justification for this was the straws were causing ocean pollution.

Unfortunately take aways weren't included in the ban. Is it more likely a straw from a drink 20 miles from the ocean in a restaurant or from a MacDonalds ( other take aways are available!), a few blocks from the beach will end up in the ocean? I eat McD so not judging the customer base but when you see the take away wrappers thrown on the ground a few feet from the bin I'm pretty sure of the answer.

W.

 

[fisherman]

What is it with fisherman?

Every place I have been in the world it's nearly always fisherman that ruin the water and shoreline. If it's not polystyrene, it's discarded bits of plastic fishing nets, or bits of engine parts, rubber gloves and all sorts of ropes. Then there is the sundry rubbish they throw overboard as routine. The used engine oil containers. And to top it all off nicely, they destroy the fish stock (and then moan that there are no fish to catch) by over fishing, whilst doing their level best to destroy the sea bed by dragging huge lumps of metal along it to scoop up a few shellfish.

And then they moan constantly that they are some sort of special case and should be cared for and protected by governments, as if they were sacred to humanity. More like we need protected from fisherman!

To complete my rant (sorry) - they make sailing in dark a gamble on actually getting to the destination unscathed (at least here in the Clyde) with lobster pot markers (specially small, so nobody can see them) seemingly in all the routes we need to use.

For some strange reason my autopilot insists on going out it's way to to aim straight at them during the day. I assume therefore it's trying to do the same at night, so that's kinda screwed up my winter night trips to Rothesay!

:ambivalence:

SOME fishermen.......

 

[asteven221]

Slight thread drift..

California has a law that prevents restaurants from providing a plastic straw unless asked for, so most places now provide paper straws that are useless and often don't even last the meal before needing replacement. The justification for this was the straws were causing ocean pollution.

Unfortunately take aways weren't included in the ban. Is it more likely a straw from a drink 20 miles from the ocean in a restaurant or from a MacDonalds ( other take aways are available!), a few blocks from the beach will end up in the ocean? I eat McD so not judging the customer base but when you see the take away wrappers thrown on the ground a few feet from the bin I'm pretty sure of the answer.

W.

Interesting. I have not really noticed overflowing bins when I am over there. I happen to go to California quite a lot and will be heading their again in exactly two weeks. I have taken a mental note to have a look at the bins.

From what I have observed in California, the coast is absolutely pristine. Not a sign of any pollution or litter or any pollution. Obviously I have not scoped out every inch of coastline, but I am familiar with all the coastline between San Francisco and San Diego and it's totally immaculate. It could be that they make an effort to clean things up to keep it like that. That wouldn't surprise me as there is always someone cleaning the streets or beaches. I think they are a bit obsessed with what the place looks like. In Long Beach they got Disney to design what looks like an island with palm trees, but it's actually an oil platform or something very similar i.e. ugly.