Atheist@Universe.Earth

I remember a few years ago, I did watch a TV documentary about artificial reefs produced by the National Geographic.

I found it very interesting, except they shown the sinking war ship and tank did provide an eco environment for most of the fish, the most impressed me a underwater concrete art gallery in Mexico MUSA ((Museo Subacuático de Arte) by Jason deCaires Taylor.

The art he made is so impressive, but unfortunately, I will never have a chance to visit that amazing museum, because I don’t know how to swim.

But it is good that we have internet,  I still can keep up to look at his website, they updated his projects very often and I really love his work :

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/pages/projects/mexico.html

And then, we have concrete memorial reefs, which can bury your love one who don’t afraid of sea.  hihihi… 

But actually, I don’t like this kind of cemetery, don’t you think this don’t serve any purpose? Your family need to diving into the deep sea to see your grave? 

And if you think it is good to the environment, but why don’t you just spread your ash into the ocean to feed the fish or into a garden to grow a tree.   The only way good is someone did can earn a living out of it. Haha!

http://www.neptunesociety.com/memorial-reef

http://www.eternalreefs.com/

http://www.mbara.org/memorial-reef-program.cfm

History:

1. In ancient, human built reefs for the other race’s attack.

2. According to the Wikipedia, thousands year ago, Persians (now is Iranian) blocked the mouth of the Tigris River to thwart Indian pirates by building an artificial reef, and then, during the First Punic Warthe Romans built a reef across the mouth of the Carthaginian harbour in Sicily to trap the enemy ships within and assist in diving the Carthaginians from the island.

3. Japanese using rubble and rocks to make reefs to grown kelp (海帶/昆布), since 17th century.

1. And the earliest recorded construction of artificial reef in the United States is from 1830s when logs from huts were used off the coast of South Carolina to improve fishing.

Development:

1. a) According to Wikipedia, when the ocean current reach a vertical structure (like concrete block, sinking ship) which put on the bottom of the sea, the current rise up the a cloud of plankton / ocean micro organisms, that can attract small fish, which also draw in pelagic predators like tuna and sharks.   

    b) It also mentioned same as the National Geographic documentary that fish love the protection of hole or crevice which provided by the sinking ship.

   c)another benefit is algae, tunicates, corals and sponges grown in the reef structure over months or years, that create more food and protection for the fish.

 

2. Coastal protection: barriers are built near fragile shores, Japan built over 4000 breakwaters in the last 20 years.

3. Surfing reefs: reefs are installed to amplify waves in popular surfing areas.

 

Material :

 

1.   Back in 1972, a well-meaning non-profit group came up with the idea of creating an artificial reef off the South Florida coast using two million old tires. The sunken rubber was supposed to lure game fish to the area and simultaneously reduce toxic waste on shore. Reefs like these already existed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Africa, Australia, and the Gulf of Mexico. None of them have been successful. Steel restraints holding the tires of the Osborne Reef together have rusted away. When tropical storms come the tires careen across the ocean floor destroying marine life and damaging natural coral reefs along the way. This ecological catastrophe has gone unnoticed by the critical human eye for decades.

     'Reef', by Hannes Bend:
     http://hannesbend.com/index.php?/bs/eclipse/

     Osborne Reef, more then 2,000,000 used vehicle tires were dumped off the coast of Fort  Lauderdale, Florida to form an artificial reef is a disaster.  

     I remember when we clean up our river, we did find some people dumping vehicle old tires for growing oyster,  vehicle tire is make of toxic plastic, when it dissolve into the water, it will poison the fish and human.  We try so hard to take the tire out of the river, because when it weight 10 times when it stuck in the river bed!!!!  That is why I know so well the damage it cost on Osborne Reef.

2.   I think the officially sanctioned material should be non release or dissolve toxic to the environment. 

3.  Another thing that very interesting me on the wiki web, is about Electro mineral accretion, it is not easy to understand for a people like me who have no knowledge about chemistry.  but after explanation from Edward.  I found it incredible interesting.  He told me about the typewriter history, how IBM came up with a solution to electro plate a plastic typing ball with hard chromium in 1961.

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

   using electrochemical process chrome onto the surface of plastic, this is similar what it explain about EMA (Electro mineral accretion) : a group of scientists put a low voltage current to the sinking ship, in order to electro the limestone which floating in the sea, then attach the coral to grown. 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_reef

but……..but……….but…….

   when I google about artificial reefs in the google picture…. I can find – dumping subway cars, conrete block, old fishing boat, war ship, antenna, plane………………………..  it is really scare me… it seem artificial reefs also can call artificial rubbish sea!!!!!!!!!!! 

 

Referring to ABC Catalyst on 6 Sept 2012:

Summary:

1. plastic products are disposed off in the sea , we already known it has a serious impact on the ecology of the marine life .

2 . plastic products poison the human food chain.

3. some very interesting figures are show in this documentary :

a) It is estimated that fish in the North Pacific now consume up to 24,000 tonnes of plastic a year (imagine these fish will be consumed by us- humans!!) , however, the plastic itself is already poisonous from the manufacturing process, and when it floats around in the ocean by currents, it does collect a lot of dirt (contaminates), when animals eat it, it will leach out into the blood stream and is incorporated into the tissues.

b) 270 species worldwide are affected by marine debris, half of them are sea-birds.

c) the plastic found in one single sea-birds stomach was equal to 5 to 8% of the bird’s weight which would be equivalent to 3 to 5 kg in a human stomach.

d) 67 kg plastic waste / per people / year is contributing to the 3.5 million pieces of plastic that enter the ocean every day.

e) above 4.3 parts per million of poison is dangerous to a birds, sea-birds on Lord Howe Island have been recorded with between 1000 – 3000 parts per million of poison.

4. 1/3 to 1/2 of the total globale marine debris consists of drinking containers, the drinking container recycling scheme in South Australia does very successfully combat this dominant marine prollution.

摘要:

1. 塑料製品大量的棄置於海中, 我們現已經知道對海洋生態做成嚴重的影響.

2. 塑料製品已經嚴重毒害人類食物鏈.

3. 在這套紀錄片中, 有些很有趣的數字:

a) 根據估計, 在北太平洋的魚產已經每年在吸取了24,000噸塑料 ( 試想這些魚類就是我們每天在消耗的食物 ). 然而, 這些塑料製造品本身在製造過程中已經用了大量的化學物質, 也亦即是本身已經夠毒的了, 於是隨著海流不斷浮游中, 收集了不少附上其中的污染物, 當動物食了, 將會滲入體內血液，並引入到之肌肉組織之中。

b) 有270種生物已經受到海洋垃圾的影響，其中一半是海鳥。

c) 在一隻海鳥的胃部找到全塞滿了塑料的重量, 是其體重之5〜8％ ，這將相當於3〜5公斤在一個人的胃裡。

d) 依統計, 全球每人每年投入了67公斤塑料廢物,  而每天就有350萬件塑料進入海洋。

e) 根據動物學家說, 高於百萬分之4.3的毒素進入海鳥身內就是高危了, 在Lord Howd 島上的海鳥卻已被記錄在體內有百萬分之1000 (即千分之一) 到 3000  (即千分之3) 的毒藥。

4. 1/3 到 1/2的全球總海洋垃圾是由飲用容器. 在南澳洲的飲用器皿回收計劃，是項佔主導地位的計劃, 並非常成功打擊了海洋污染。

 

Let's have a look on the examination of sea-birds on Lord Howe Island :  好了, 讓我們去看看是什麼引起了關注Lord Howe 島上的海鳥:

Most of the bird carcasses found in the Lord Howe forest, have their stomach full of plastic pieces, including doll’s arm:

Lord Howe Island, a beautiful Island - widely regarded as the most beautiful island in the Pacific — it is the closest island getaway to Sydney, and a part of New South Wales. It’s less than two hours flying from either Sydney or Brisbane off the Australian east coast 

 

It's estimated 3.5 million pieces of new plastic enter the world's oceans daily. Carried on global currents they accumulate in huge circulating gyres causing countless injuries to marine life along the way.

Plastics don't biodegrade but over many years in the sun and elements they break down into smaller and smaller pieces until they're so small they're hard to see.

But the real problem with these harmless looking pieces is they can be ingested by animals right down at the bottom of the food chain. As far down as plankton, and that's where plastics come back to meet their maker.

 

They have what I call the invisible toxic effect. It, it's less easy to detect but equally as scary.The plastic itself inherently contains a wide array of chemicals that are used during the manufacturing and processes.

When the plastic is put out into the marine environment and it floats around in the ocean for let's say ten or forty years it really does last forever,， it basically acts like a little magnet or a sponge and it takes all the contaminates that are out there in the ocean environment that are really diluted in the ocean water and it concentrates it up, onto the surface.Plastic itself has up to a thousand times a higher concentration of containments on its surface than the surrounding seawater from which it came.

And when the animal, whether it's a turtle or a seabird takes that into their body those contaminants leach out into the blood stream and is incorporated into the tissues.

The flesh footed shearwater on Lord Howe Island is officially the world's most heavily contaminated seabird just from mercury alone.

So the toxic threshold that's widely regarded around the world for birds is four point three parts per million. Anything above that four point three PPM is considered toxic to the birds.

Well flesh footed shearwaters on Lord Howe Island are between one thousand and three thousand parts per million.

Asides from death, mercury can cause a wide array of effects from neurological damage to infertility. And mercury is just。 one of the many toxic contaminates found in and on plastic debris.

 

There is now a huge range of studies that are coming out almost every month that are showing marine species at the absolute base of the food chain are ingesting these plastics and these contaminates. Anything really that comes out of the ocean you cannot certify that as organic any longer.

Its estimated fish in the North Pacific now consume up to twenty-four thousand tonnes of plastic a year. 
As one predator eats another contaminates biomagnify. This means the most vulnerable animal to the effects of toxic plastic contamination is the one at the very top of the food chain, us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E5%A4%AA%E5%B9%B3%E6%B4%8B%E7%92%B0%E6%B5%81%E7%B3%BB%E7%B5%B1

Observationally we do not find full plastic bottles or cans or glass bottles in, in South Australia and I would likely attribute that to the, to the container deposit scheme that they have there.The waste that's associated with the beverage industry comprises about a third and some estimates are as high as a half of the marine debris that we find globally. So that's bottles and cans and straws and disposal coffee cups, bring your to go cup with you.

you can watch this documentary in youtube as flwg:

 

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another videos and information relevant to this topic, that you may interesting in as flwg:

1. One of the Dirtiest Beaches in the World - Hawaii - Message in the Wave

2. Digging into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch