Presumably, real fish are non-trivial to catch -- they can avoid your hooks and nets, they can get wise to your strategies, and sooner or later, you caught all the fish.

At the same time, the level of wailing (pun intended) over plastic in the ocean is ever increasing, with the added effect that I now have to drink my Bloody Marys with -- gasp -- paper straws. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson's friends didn't properly warn me about this.

But -- it seems like since there are fishermen of all kinds out on the see already, one improvement to the current situation might be (perhaps through a world UN treaty) to allocate budget such that whatever fishermen bring in, in plastic, they can be compensated for?
-- theircompetitor, Jun 22 2019

In reply to [8th] Ocean-Going Plastic...ed Bussard Ram-Ship
// Build trawlers with steam engines. Throw any plastic retrieved straight into the firebox as fuel. // [notexactly, Jul 01 2019]

What bait would you use?
-- pertinax, Jun 23 2019


//bait// A fast flowing stream of water.
-- wjt, Jun 23 2019


A sensible idea, but somehow not quite so appealing as the in- situ robotic fabrication of buoyant plastic bubbles, each loosely coupled to its neighbours, until the North Pacific is home to the world's largest unstable stochastic bouncy castle.

Its submerged parts (pushed gradually deeper as mass accumulated above them) might begin to perform some of the ecological offices of a reef, while birds would come to nest on the upper parts.

Footloose libertarians would plant a flag and start exporting guano.

Mangroves and pirate gold are surely only a matter of time.
-- pertinax, Jun 23 2019


How about a hexipod robot that glues macro/micro plastics to it's carapace and sternites until full. Then, on low battery, links to other hexipods. A sort of mechanised macro-antigen cleanup.
-- wjt, Jun 23 2019


Build trawlers with steam engines. Throw any plastic retrieved straight into the firebox as fuel. Et viola ! Problem solved.
-- 8th of 7, Jun 23 2019


From the title of this idea I thought this was going to be about a campaigning organisation with a membership of fish, taking a pro-plastic stance and fighting for greater recognition of plastic and for the rights of plastic.
-- hippo, Jul 01 2019


Drug activism against the schooling.
-- wjt, Jul 05 2019



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