I'm curious why you find the article "impossible"? It's claims are that plastic - when in connection with coral - causes the coral to sicken and die. From the article:
Is your argument that it's impossible for the garbage to accumulate where the study claims it did? Or that the volumes found are impossible? Or something else?
For the record, the actual study can be found
here.
Sorry for not responding earlier. Thanks for the link. I didn't have time then to look at the article in depth a few weeks ago. However, the link is now paywalled , so I have to go off my memory.
First, the assertion being made is that "plastic is killing the reefs". My thought on that is, basic oceanography will say that it's very difficult for plastic to accumulate on a large coral reef - a group of rocks sticking out of the ocean that are made mostly of SPS/LPS corals and coral-skeleton rock - at the reef crest, back reef, and fore reef zones. The only kind of coral reef where large amounts of plastic is likely to accumulate are patch reefs in the lagoon and inshore zone, and even then only in places where the currents create dead zones or low flow.
Second, from what I recall of the summary that's now paywalled, the actual study (vice the press reaction and comments on the press articles) stated that they surveyed 200-some "reefs" (no further details in the summary the exact locations, or the location in the overall zonation mentioned above in the summary) in Indonesia, Thailand, and Australia. (they also had, IMO an unnecessary and politicizing table of human population densities per country, which was intended to show the "threat to reefs" by those countries) A number of the Indonesian ones were near heavily populated islands (to include Java, one of the most populated places in the world), and the Thai ones were near big resort locations, IIRC. The Australian ones were parts of the Great Barrier Reef relatively far from inhabited areas (and again, the summary had no details on what section of the reef zone was surveyed).
Without knowledge of flows, reef geography, and which reef zone their each of their surveyed "reefs" come from (which again was not available in what I recall of the summary), their data sample is skewed and meaningless. For instance, a patch reef in a low-ish flow zone on Java will very likely have a lot of trash of various sorts in it, but a fore reef on the Great Barrier reef will likely not. This could be one explanation for their finding that the amount of trash they found in "Indonesia" was several 100X, IIRC, what they found in Australia.
It's like me using LA, NYC, and St. Louis to represent US auto emission levels, while asserting that Canada has much less based on survey areas on the northern BC coast. And then using that imply (with the hopes that the press will takeaway) that the world is threatened by auto emissions. (which it may be, but again such a sample is skewed and meaningless)
Again, no one doubts that trash will accumulate in inshore and lagoon zones with low current or in dead zones. The BBC video above shows such a place. The reef crest is a different animal.
Also, I will buy that plastic caught in branching coral is bad for the corals' growth.
Finally, for the OP: I snorkeled four areas in the U.S. State of Hawaii with heavy coral populations in the last few weeks. Three fringing reefs (Honaunau, Kealakekua Bay, Hanauma Bay - the latter with a small inshore zone, and significant amounts of coral rock, to include a very large former, IIRC, Acropora colony, which died after global cooling caused sea levels to drop and cause Acropora to almost go extinct in the main Hawaiian Islands) and one set of large tide pools (Kapoho Tide pools).
I saw no plastic or other trash on any of these, save for one piece of plastic in Kapoho which I removed.
This is not surprising.
At Honaunau and Kealakekua, the days I was there, the nearshore sea state was on the lower side of 3. Those fringing reefs have no inshore zone and to directly down to deeper water, as they're a mountain slope which goes from ~13k ft continuously down to the abyss at around a 12 degree slope. The sheer strength of the waves and sediment stirred up by such relatively low sea state was impressive, and again any floating garbage in the area would almost certainly be carried out to sea. (or thrown onto the land, depending on the geography- it's very interesting to see in some places large, very smooth stones several meters inland, or on ledges ~10m high, all of which were in the sea for centuries and placed on the land by surge).
Similar goes for Hanauma and Kapoho - nearshore sea states were even higher and the current was strong. Hanauma is aided by a very good clean up program (it's a major state park) for whatever might not be carried out to sea.
ETA: a google search found where trash accumulates on the Big Island of Hawaii:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...est-beach-america_us_58e99a38e4b05413bfe3792d
Bottom line: accumulation of floating plastic, it seems to me, is a function mostly of where the currents go in a particular area. Accumulation of heavy, non floating debris (engine blocks, washing machines, etc.) is simply a function of where people dump them, in turn a function of where it's convenient for people to dump.
