Who do we call???

[Tolleys]

Is there someone we can call concerning floating trash in the ocean? We see an inflated black garbage bag and soda bottles off the sea cliffs at Paradise Ala Kai and "C" st. in HPP. The police and fire department can not help. Who fishes this stuff out of the ocean?

Mahlo!

Susan

[Carey]

Susan, if you can fish it out, or see a fisher on the shore who can, that is great.

There are many groups that do organized coastal clean-ups though out the year, but those of us involved know that we are only able to take a small fraction of the total dumped. Even when there are listed endangered life at stake, there is a very limited resource to call upon.

Unfortunately, there are tons of trash that are dumped in the Hawaiian waters. For most of it, it joins the sea of trash that is floating & sunk in the ocean. Trash dumped near sea cliffs is hazardous not only to the sea life that may get entangled in it, but would hazardous to go out and fetch, due to the shear cliff walls & very strong currents & undertow at the cliffs.

I wish I could offer you more, but I do understand your concern & have spent many days on this problem.

[Tolleys]

Thanks Carey - unfortunately it is too far out to retrieve from the sea cliffs. I was counting on a response from you! I thought you would be the best source for information. Sorry to hear there is no volunteer group with boats that can retrieve it before it sinks or joins the island of trash... []

Mahalo

Susan

[DanielP]

Some of the locals use inflated gargage bags to carry their fishing line and bait downwind far from shore.

[Tolleys]

DanielP
Thanks for the input. Might have been just that. There were also 2 liter plastic bottles in the water. And yes there were poles in the water too. However, were not close enough to see the connection between the poles and the floating objects...

Mahalo!

Susan

[DanielP]

Were the objects that you observed moving along with the wind or current, or were they stationary?

[mella l]

Perhaps if you see anyone throwing garbage into the ocean writing down any license number would be helpful to the police. Perhaps a warning would be sent. I do so hope that this doesn't become more of a problem with the increase in fees, it will just cost in some other way down the line..

mella l

"New York London Paris Hilo"

[MarkP]

If it is someone fishing there would have been an offshore breeze. The inflated bag would have been furthest offshore and the bottles would have been closer in. It would be unusual to see this on the windward side since it requires an offshore breeze, but where there is such a breeze the practice is common.

There is the risk of the plastic bags getting loose in the ocean, which is not good stewardship of the ocean, but you will be unsuccessful if you try to convince a local fisherman of this. Nothing would be a better example of a mainland haole coming in and trying to change things. Going up and telling someone they are bad people for fishing that way would be worse than useless. It has been done this way for as long as there have been garbage bags.

As a reality check, NOONE goes out and cleans stuff like this up, not just one bag. We must work with people onshore to change their behavior.

There are laws prohibiting dumping any amount of plastic into the ocean, but virtually all fishing lures and line are plastic. I don't know how the authorities draw the line but they obviously do.