Destroying an eco-system in the name of conservation

“The Ocean Cleanup says it wants to protect animals at the ocean’s surface from plastic, but neuston is the ecosystem of the ocean’s surface. There is a reason turtles and sunfish eat floating surface plastic: It looks like neuston. Using these wall-like barriers to collect plastic in spite of the neuston is like clear-cutting a canopy in the name of helping a forest. There is no point in collecting plastic if by the end there is nothing left to conserve.”

A different approach: “Place a modified design closer to plastic sources—river mouths and bays—to catch plastic before it enters the open ocean. Choose a place where it can be monitored and corrected for environmental impact. It seems too great a risk to disrupt the whole surface ocean ecosystem so severely, when it is also one we barely know. The neuston is an alien world, as bizarre as it is beautiful. It’s still possible to avoid destroying this strange ecosystem, wedged between sea and sky.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cleanup-project-could-destroy-neuston/580693/