Seafood-lovers eat 11,000 pieces/(particles) of plastic a year

[TylerDurden]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5138133/Seafood-lovers-eat-11-000-pieces-plastic-year.html

[TylerDurden]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5198019/Plastic-mussels-Arctic-China-enters-human-food.html

[dair]

Ever been to a deserted beach in Thailand? they are the most polluted and plastic-filled ones, because on the ones where people go, they always make enormous efforts to constantly clean up the beach, so you don't realise how much junk comes from the sea... Anythings to plastic shoes (a lot), plastic bags (loads), wrappers for junk food, lots of plastic bottles... I am sad to say that, part of all this crap is thrown out by some fishermen and local boat people: they are usually poor, uneducated, but not poor enough, they still have the money to buy junk food etc, and not care about the environment. On the other hand, if there were not so many tourists, there also would be much less garbage etc, and people working for the tourist industry, many of these are just interested in  quick buck.
 I once tried to clean up a beach, that was not very much visited by tourists or locals... It was an impossible project, just too big... The worst were the thin plastic bags: they do not decompose, they just divide in smaller and smaller pieces... It's really sad what's happening... I love sea-food, but somehow my instincts have told me since many years that they are not healthy for me. But maybe there some really pristine areas totally devoid of plastics and chemicals...? Not sure

[TylerDurden]

I have had bad experiences here and there:-

1) In my family home on the northern Italian Riviera, as a child I used to find tons of limpets everywhere on the rocks near the shore, and there were many sea-urchins I could harvest for their orange egg-masses. Local fishermen and friends/family even managed to hunt and catch the various octopi hiding in the nearby underwater rocks.While my family were not cooked-foodists, they were passionate about some raw seafood(raw oysters, raw limpets and raw sea-urchin eggs) and raw, aged cheeses.  I later was told that the reason more and more limpets in our area were all  strangely orange-coloured was because of all the pollution in the sea.These days, the octopi have all been killed off by local amateur fishermen, the only fish I sea when snorkelling tend to be of the multi-coloured, very tiny type(ie less than  1.5cm in length and a couple of  mm in width), and the limpets have mostly disappeared. I only rarely encounter egg-laden female sea-urchins and then only if I look very carefully in hidden crevices under rocks at least 1m below the surface.

2) I once visited Rio in September. I did not dare to swim as I was alone, and I am most grateful for this decision, as it turns out that the last Rio summer Olympics involved athlete rowers having to row across sea-strewn garbage:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720802/Rio-Olympics-pollution-problem-worsens-raw-sewage-pours-Guanabara-Bay.html

[dair]

Yes, such a shame with pollution of the seas...

Heard somewhere that humankind has gone through many different phases during evolution, and one of them (not a mainstream theory) was that some primitive groups went through an aquatic phase (around Indonesia for instance), they were waders, and living of the shores, feeding of shells and all sort of sea food, and some call this "brain-food", one of the reasons for brain expansion of the people in this area in Asia.

[political atheist]

so basically nothing should be eaten from sea/ocean/rivers?

[TylerDurden]

so basically nothing should be eaten from sea/ocean/rivers?

Not really. But perhaps even a humble individual might stop using plastic bags and only use alternatives, when going shopping. At the rate the world is getting (over-)polluted, though, all mankind will be suffering from horrible ill-health in a couple of thousands of years,  regardless of how well they try to eat.

[TylerDurden]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5214025/Plastic-production-disastrous-consequences.html

[Apani]

so basically nothing should be eaten from sea/ocean/rivers?

My mother once bought me swordfish from a supermarket because our fishmonger was closed;
it tasted so off, I couldn't even bring myself to swallow one bite.

My guess is, as long as your fish tastes like fish and not like a plastic bag, it's fine to eat.

[Iguana]

How does a plastic bag taste? 

[Apani]

It tastes... of pollution.

But really, it felt like I was eating a toy replica a child would play with.