Originally Posted by
rockflyertalk
May I ask? But did you or could you do anything about the rubbish dump you sail passed?
That would be the best solution towards the greater solution. Clearing up what we created or moving the problem out of harms way seems like a better idea. Understandably we can’t always play good cop and tackle the problem we see. I’d be disappointed if you sailed passed and did nothing. That’s where we all let each other down. Unless you have a perfectly valid reason why.
I had a very good reason not to do anything about it.
It was about 3 miles long and goodness knows how wide - it was literally a sea of it. When I wrote 'huge', I meant it (I don't do hyperbole).
There is nothing I can do when it is at that scale, except to report the issue (they already knew). Moving it out of harm's way would have been impossible because of the sheer scale of it, and besides moving it would do no good - the current etc. will simply take it elsewhere, so it needs to be removed, not just moved. It would need a fleet of vessels with fine nets working the area systematically to collect them. It appeared to be some kind of a converging point for rubbish from various places, as reported in various parts of the sea/ocean.
Other than the sheer scale of it, hoving-to or keeping it on autopilot and trying to collect things would have been somewhat dicey - I'm talking about short-handed sailing in pretty rough sea at relatively low temperature here and it wouldn't have been too amusing if I fell in (although I guess I could have tried to hold onto some of the debris!). It's not like picking up rubbish from a beach (which I would do).
When safely possible and it's not at a silly scale, I try to fish out any rubbish from the sea and dispose of them properly though. A floating dead cow (elsewhere, not in the huge rubbish dump), however, defeated us... (no, really, this one was hazard to shipping, but being organic it wouldn't have harmed the environment in a serious way).