Peril of fishing debris

Friends of Animals has followed your profoundly sad, but important story about an osprey rescue ending tragically, (Hearst Connecticut Media, Aug. 7, 2018) followed by your excellent “Thumbs down” editorial, plus an article in which the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) warned that wildlife gets tangled up in the nearly invisible fishing line, “causing serious harm or death.”

Without prompting anglers to dispose of fishing lines, hooks and garbage properly, as your editorial says, there’s a “huge threat to wildlife,” including sea birds, sea mammals, turtles, fish and others. It’s astonishing that the first effort to avert this littering disaster comes from “a proactive student group in Fairfield that is building fishing line bins,” and that two conservation groups will install them at beaches and marinas.

Cheers for that productive action. Others can quit fishing and fish consumption.

There are facts about the tons of plastic floating in our waterways that may be underreported.

First, those piles are mostly made of abandoned fishing equipment, which means many anglers are undisciplined slobs.

Microplastics make up only 8 percent of the total tonnage of garbage in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (between Hawaii and California), while fishing nets account for 46 percent. The rest is other fishing gear, and debris from the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, according to National Geographic.

Banning things such as single-use plastic bags and straws feels productive, but it’s not the best way to stop plastic pollution of our oceans. We need fishermen to stop treating our oceans like trash cans.

And developing countries must do a better job of putting trash in landfills and converting plastics to energy, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

Priscilla Feral The writer is president of the Darien-based Friends Friends of Animals.