rubbish affirmative - utnif 2014

Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014

Index Index....................................................................................................................................................................1Maritime Rubbish 1AC........................................................................................................................................2

Case Extensions.....................................................................................................................................................17XT: Inherency................................................................................................................................................18XT: Inherency................................................................................................................................................19XT: Mechanism Solvency.............................................................................................................................20XT: Mechanism Solvency.............................................................................................................................21XT: Mechanism Solvency.............................................................................................................................22XT: Mechanism Solvency.............................................................................................................................23XT: Method Solvency....................................................................................................................................25XT: Method Solvency....................................................................................................................................28XT: Method Solvency....................................................................................................................................30XT: Bio-D Internal Link................................................................................................................................31XT: Bio-D Impact..........................................................................................................................................32

AT AT................................................................................................................................................................36AT Biodegradable..........................................................................................................................................37AT Oceans = Resilient...................................................................................................................................38AT Ecosystems Resilient...............................................................................................................................39AT Efficiency................................................................................................................................................40AT Land Solutions Key.................................................................................................................................42AT Plastic Decomposition.............................................................................................................................43AT Biodiversity Internal Link Turn..............................................................................................................44AT Boulter.....................................................................................................................................................45

AT Topicality.....................................................................................................................................................462AC Topicality—Exploration is Discovery..................................................................................................47

AT Framework...................................................................................................................................................492AC Framework............................................................................................................................................50Framework—AT: Decision Making..............................................................................................................52

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Maritime Rubbish 1AC From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch off the coast of Hawaii to the microscopic pieces of plastics in the deepest nooks of the Mariana Trench debris litters every part of the Earth’s oceans. Rather than addressing the perniciousness of marine debris, current exploration practices too often efface the materiality of trash by construing it as nothing but a drop in pristine and vast oceans.Arnshav 14 Mirja Arnshav. Research Coordinator at Maritime Museum of Stockholm University. June 2014. “The Freedom of the Seas: Untapping the Archaeological Potential of Marine Debris”. Journal of Maritime Archaeology 9:1. Pages 1-25.

How then, are we to understand this engagement with the sea? The natural properties of water are a key to understanding humanity’s relation with it. Within the field of garbage studies, waste disposal is often discussed with reference to the truism “out of sight, out of mind” (Scanlan 2005:157–158; Shanks et al. 2004:70; Thompson 2008:3). As has already been touched upon, there is a strong tendency in modern society to conceal waste and create a distance to it (Åkesson 2005a:146–147, 2008:147–150). Needless to say, the physical properties of water correspond very well to such requirements. Hiding and separating whatever has been dumped, waterscapes make perfect places for oblivion. As been pointed out by Swedish maritime archaeologist Carl Olof Cederlund, the surface of the sea has commonly been designated as “a limit to our perception” (my translation) (Cederlund 1995:41, 1996:168). Similar reflections have been put forward by Kimberly Patton, discussing the conceptual underpinnings of marine pollution. According to her, the treatment of the world’s oceans by industrialized nations arises from traditional beliefs, traceably in myths and religious narratives, about the oceans inviolability. The genesis of these habits and attitudes are in turn located in the sea’s own natural qualities: its vast size and depth; its chronic motion in currents, tides and waves, its apparent inexhaustibility (see also Simmons 1994:109). As Patton puts it: …I have… tried to argue that human habits of thought and action were, and still remain, a kind of ritualized response to human constructions of the ocean’s physical qualities. Such ideas about the nature of the sea may be culturally reinforced, but they are daily reinscribed by the testimony of our eyes. In tons of water, in saltiness, in bottomless depth and endless horizon, and, above all, in many forms of ceaseless motion, human populations, especially those who live along the littoral, see—and have always seen—in the world′s oceans a mighty, efficacious means of “cleaning” our habitous and making it safe, clean, and viable. Our impressions have lent themselves over the years to chronic, unreflective marine pollution (Patton 2007:133). In trying to understand the phenomenon of marine dumping, I would like to put forward yet another potentially explanatory aspect, namely the suggestion that people living in a seascape tend to cultivate a special linking for freedom (Rönnby 2010:77; Arnshav2011:95). Although an argument still in its infancy, such a notion might very well be of importance for the understanding of the conceptual underpinnings of marine dumping. It is notable that the legal concept of “freedom of the seas” was one of the earliest tenets of international law. And as been observed by Charles Moore: Even now, with anti-pollution rules firmly in place, the notion of “freedom” persists… if not only legally, then in the minds of many who ply the seas. It′s a hard thing to surrender: the idea of a place left on earth where anything goes and no one will know better. (Moore and Phillips 2011:68). Regardless of why, the practice of marine dumping represents an interesting example of humaity’s entanglement with the sea. Within maritime archaeology, the agency of waterscapes and influence on human actions has been discussed in terms of “the maritime factor”. Also, the existence of “maritime durées”, i.e. long-time structures as regards the interaction between people and the sea, has been put forward (Rönnby 2010). With reference to the examples presented above, the tenacious human tendency to turn to waterscapes for the purpose of waste disposal can be labeled yet another “maritime durée”, and that the natural properties of water are essential for understanding such a strategy. Garbage in Action: A Mess with a Message In Sweden, the issue of marine littering is a hot topic. It is recurrently highlighted in the press, and there are several municipalities and environmental organizations engaged in cleaning operations and education campaigns (for example see FRP AB 2012; Kimo 2012; Skärgårdsstiftelsen 2011a). In July 2012, I attended an event which aimed to draw public attention to the question of marine debris. The happening was jointly arranged by some of the leading partners and authorities dealing with the issue. It was held at Visby, Gotland, during the so called Almedalsveckan (Sweden’s biggest annual political meeting, gathering hundreds of exhibitors, program items and journalists). Centered around the brig replica Tre Kronor a wide range of actors were mobilized. On the quay two fishermen presented some examples from their recent by-catch—a tangled skein of synthetic cloths, a bicycle, a couple of chemicals drums and an old Russian ship telephone. Next by was a touring poster exhibition on marine pollution. Two divers went into the water and returned with a few examples of the scrappy contents of the harbour. And in the meanwhile, a pair of entertainers, known from a children’s tv-show as environmentally-minded diving characters, amused the audience. Later, a seminar focusing on environmental aspects of marine debris was held onboard the ship (FRP AB 2012; Fig. 4). In the mingle that followed, I spoke to a man in the recycling business. “Why, he said, does everyone go on talking about litter instead of material? Why do they focus on the costs and not the economical values? I refuse to term it garbage. To me, it is nothing else than materials, and as such it ought to be

useful!” (Pontus Almén, Stena, 2012-07-04). True enough, the tendency to embed these things as “garbage” is due to a specific point of departure. From an environmentalist perspective, garbage is primarily understood with reference to harm and its hazardous impacts on the physical viability of the planet and the human race (Patton 2007:14–15). By contrast, garbage can also been pictured as a socially constructed category, lacking any objective reality (Douglas 2002:2; Shanks et al. 2004:65; Thompson 2008). An example of this perception is anthropologist Michael Thompson’s authoritative Rubbish theory, in which garbage is described as a thing approaching a ‘zero point’ of value. At its nadir in a cycle of consumption and production, rubbish is both ready for disappearance and yet ripe for reinvestment, reinterpretation or revaluing. In this transitional state, operating apparently outside the world of the useful, functioning and valued, the discarded thing may appear as autonomous, existing in and for itself (Thompson 1979; se also Pye 2010:6). [Within this context, one might also recall anthropologist Ivar Kopytoffs, who’s work on object’s biographies has reveled how economic and social value varies through time and as it travels through different spheres of exchange (Kopytoff 1986)]. Drawing from the argument that disposal is never final, Kevin Hetherington has suggested that rather than seeing the rubbish bin as the archetypical conduit of disposal, the door might be seen as a better example. Rather than being something totally absent, garbage may have a structuring effect, impacting on attitudes and relations (Hetherington 2004). Also, there is truth in the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. To entrepreneurs, waste disposal, recycling, ship scrapping and the like make for profitable businesses (Humes 2012:9–14, 76–95; Richards 2008:145–177). To people on the margin, it can be essential for making a living. In the meanwhile, fascination with ruins and tourism to abandoned places are developing into an economy on its own and phenomenon’s like dumpster diving and flee market shopping are phenomenon’s on the rise (Åkesson 2005a:142–145; 2008:146–147). In

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014conclusion, there are plenty of telling examples on how discarded goods can be functional and valuable. During the Visby event, the usefulness of marine debris was proved in a number of ways. It generated media attention. It underlined the credibility of the presentations given at the seminar and it created valuable goodwill to all attending organizations. In addition, it provided props for a playful show. However, the principal application of the garbage at Visby harbor did not concern economical values, but rather emotional and communicative ones. The main objective of the arrangement was to gain attention to a pressing environmental problem: that of marine pollution. Traditionally, the ocean was commonly seen to be inexhaustible, almost resistant to human harm. In 1951, Rachel Carson wrote in The Sea Around Us that man “cannot control or change the ocean as, in his brief tenancy on earth, he has subdued and plundered the continents” (Carson 1951 cited in Hohn 2011:373). This was of course a grave misconception. In fact, in many places the oceans were transformed hundreds of years ago (Roberts 2008/2007). Today, it is known that the sea holds a considerable amount of liquid chemical and radioactive waste. Figure 5 Each year, tens of millions of tons of sewage sludge, industrial waste and polluted dredged material are dumped into the ocean. Along the shipping lines of the high seas, millions of metric tons of oil are spilled annually, and thousands of containers—each capable of releasing numerous items—are being washed overboard due to heavy weather each year (Hohn 2011:34; MarineBio 2012). Decomposed plastic has established itself in the ocean as a ubiquitous, non-nutritive component of the ecosystem, accumulating in massive garbage patches. In the most famous of them, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a vast mass of floating debris midway between Hawaii and California that is twice the size of Texas—microplastics significantly outnumber zooplankton (Moore and Phillips 2011:116). It is now also that accumulation of waste in the ocean is detrimental to marine and human health (MarineBio2012). Despite this, the idea that the oceans could be harmed by reckless practices of solid garbage dumping has proven underappreciated (Carson 1962:viii–xiii; Moore and Phillips 2011:109–125; Roberts2008/2007:15:16). From our land-based reference point, quays and shorelines somewhat frame our conception of the world, making most people blissfully aware of the mess under water. Of course, we have all heard of marine pollution, but the term mainly connotates chemicals and intangible substances, eutrophication and possible even microplastics. It is rarely conceived of as solid garbage. It was not until fairly recently that the problem of marine littering did become a hot issue. An important milestone was the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the late 1990s, an observation that was followed by further garbage patch finds around the world. Since then, a raising number of seafarers, scientists and journalists have sounded the alarm over the invasion of garbage into the oceans (Coe and Rodgers 1997; Earle 1995; Humes 2012:97–114; Moore and Phillips 2011). Two spectacular and “hilarious” container spill incidents– the Nike shoe spill in 1990 and the loss of thousands of bath toys in 1992—contributed greatly to fuel a wider public and scientific interest in the matter (Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano 2009; Hohn 2011). Today, ghost nets, flotsam and container spills are examples of subjects with a high profile within the public debate as well as the environmental science. Above all, plastic debris attracts most of the media attention (Moore and Phillips 2011:290, se also 344–346 for an overview of research papers). How then was the garbage selection at Visby harbor activated in order to comment on the problem of marine pollution? In order to understand this, it is important to point out a few general things about the agency of garbage and material culture. Normally, we like to keep garbage at a certain distance (Scanlan 2005:157–163). As been pointed out by John Scanlan “Garbage is everywere but, curiously, is most overlooked in what we take to be valuable from our lived experiences…” (Scanlan 2005:9). Its elusiveness is due to its character: “it is when something means nothing to you that it becomes garbage” (Scanlan 2005:10). Hence, although litter is virtually always within sight (hidden in containers, garbage cans etc.) we are culturally trained to overlook it (Shanks et al.2004:69–71). On a wider scale, the industrialized world invests endless thoughts and resources into “getting rid” of its unwanted remains. However, as been pointed out by Gay Hawkins, things that we do not want to see or deal with tend to matter a great deal to us. She speaks of “the force of the hidden”, meaning that what has been hidden, concealed and separated still takes up a great space in our minds and govern social relations. It lurks under the surface and demands cultural handling techniques. In that way, the absent can be of importance for maintaining social order and political authority (Hawkins 2003:40–42). Much in accordance with that, Kevin Hetherington speaks about “absent presence”, arguing that “disposal is about placing absences and this has consequences for how we think about ‘social relations’” (Hetherington 2004:159, see also Buchli and Lucas2001a; Humes 2012:98). Disposal thus is not only about throwing things away, it is also about how we manage and are managed by the absent. As already been touched upon, debris does have a powerful impact on society in many ways—also mentally. Garbage that has not been correctly discarded haunts us (Hetherington 2004; see Gordon 1997 for a reasoning on the term haunting), and so does the thought on littered landscapes and mountains of garbage.

Marine debris assails ocean life—killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds, fish, plants, mammals and threatens the existence of some of the ocean’s most endangered species, yet its affects are underestimated because of the perceived immensity of the ocean and the lack of visible devastation. Derraik 2 Jose G.B., Ecology and Health Research Centre, Department of Public Health,Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago. “The pollution of the marine environment by plastic debris: a review” Marine Pollution Bulletin 44

Since the use of plastics continues to increase, so does the amount of plastics polluting the marine environment. Robert et al. (1995) examined the gut content of thousands of birds in two separate studies and found that the ingestion of plastics by seabirds had significantly increased duringthe 10–15 years interval between studies. A study done in the North Pacific (Blight and Burger, 1997) found plastic particles in the stomachs of 8 of the 11 seabird species caught as bycatch. The list of affected species indicates that marine debris are affecting a significant number of species (Laist, 1997). It affects at least 267 species worldwide, including86% of all sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species, and 43% of all marine mammal species (Laist, 1997). The problem may be highly underestimated as most victim are likely to go undiscovered over vast ocean areas, as they either sink or are eaten by predators (Wolfe, 1987). There is also potential danger to marine

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014ecosystems from the accumulation of plastic debris on the sea floor. Accordingto Kanehiro et al. (1995) plastics made up 80–85% of the seabed debris in Tokyo Bay, an impressive figure considering that most plastic debris are buoyant. The accumulation of such debris can inhibit the gas exchange between the overlying waters and the pore waters of the sediments, and the resulting hypoxia or anoxia in the benthos can interfere with the normal ecosystem functioning, and alter the make-up of life on the sea floor (Goldberg, 1994). Moreover, as for pelagic organisms, benthic biota is likewise subjected to entanglement and ingestion hazards (Hess et al., 1999). 2.1. Ingestion of plastics A study done on 1033 birds collected off the coast of North Carolina in the USA found that individuals from 55% of the species recorded had plastic particles in their guts (Moser and Lee, 1992). The authors obtained evidence that some seabirds select specific plastic shapes and colors, mistaking them for potential prey items. Shaw and Day (1994) came to the same conclusions, as they studied the presence of floatingplastic particles of different forms, colors and sizes in the North Pacific, finding that many are significantly under-represented. Carpenter et al. (1972) examined various species of fish with plastic debris in their guts and found that only white plastic spherules had been ingested, indicating that they feed selectively. A similar pattern of selective ingestion of white plastic debris was found for loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) in the Central Mediterranean (Gramentz, 1988). Among seabirds, the ingestion of plastics is directly correlated to foraging strategies and technique, and diet (Azzarello and Van-Vleet, 1987; Ryan, 1987a; Moser and Lee, 1992; Laist, 1987, 1997). For instance, planktivores are more likely to confuse plastic pellets with their prey than do piscivores, therefore the former have a higher incidence of ingested plastics (Azzarello and Van-Vleet, 1987). Ryan (1988) performed an experiment with domestic chickens (Gallus domesticus) to establish the potential effects of ingested plastic particles on seabirds. They were fed with polyethylene pellets and the results indicated that ingested plastics reduce meal size by reducing the storage volume of the stomach and the feeding stimulus. He concluded that seabirds with large plastic loads have reduced food consumption, which limits their ability to lay down fat deposits, thus reducingfitness . Connors and Smith (1982) had previously reached the same conclusion, as their study indicated that the ingestion of plastic particles hindered formation of fat deposits in migrating red phalaropes (Phalaropus fulicarius), adversely affecting long-distance migration and possibly their reproductive effort on breedingg rounds. Spear et al. (1995) however, provided probably the first solid evidence for a negative relationship between number of plastic particles ingested and physical condition (body weight) in seabirds from the tropical Pacific. Other harmful effects from the ingestion of plastics include blockage of gastric enzyme secretion, diminished feedingstimulus , lowered steroid hormone levels, delayed ovulation and reproductive failure (Azzarello and Van-Vleet, 1987). The ingestion of plastic debris by small fish and seabirds for instance, can reduce food uptake, cause internal injury and death following blockage of intestinal tract (Carpenter et al., 1972; Rothstein, 1973; Ryan, 1988; Zitko and Hanlon, 1991). The extent of the harm, however, will vary amongspecies. Procellariiformes for example, are more vulnerable due to their inability to regurgitate ingested plastics (Furness, 1985; Azzarello and Van-Vleet, 1987). Laist (1987) and Fry et al. (1987) observed that adults that manage to regurgitate plastic particles could pass them onto the chicks duringfeedi ng. The chicks of Laysan albatrosses (Diomedea immutabilis) in the Hawaiian Islands for instance, are unable to regurgitate such materials which accumulate in their stomachs, becominga significant source of mortality, as 90% of the chicks surveyed had some sort of plastic debris in their upper GI tract (Fry et al., 1987). Even Antarctic and sub-Antarctic seabirds are subjected to this hazard (Slip et al., 1990). Wilson’s storm-petrels (Oceanites oceanicus) for instance, pick up plastic debris while wintering in other areas (Van Franeker and Bell, 1988). A whitefaced storm-petrel (Pelagodroma marina) found dead at the isolated Chatham Islands (New Zealand) at a breedingsit e, had no food in its stomach while its gizzard was packed with plastic pellets (Bourne and Imber, 1982). The harm from ingestion of plastics is nevertheless not restricted to seabirds. Polythene bags drifting in ocean currents look much like the prey items targeted by turtles (Mattlin and Cawthorn, 1986; Gramentz, 1988; Bugoni et al., 2001). There is evidence that their survival is being hindered by plastic debris (Duguy et al., 1998), with young sea turtles being particularly vulnerable (Carr, 1987). Balazs (1985) listed 79 cases of turtles whose guts were full of various sorts of plastic debris, and O’Hara et al. (1988) cited a turtle found in New York that had swallowed 540 m of fishingline. Oesophagus and stomach contents were examined from 38 specimens of the endangered green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) on the south of Brazil, 23 of which (60.5%) had ingested anthropogenic debris, mainly plastics (Bugoni et al., 2001). Among other C. mydas washed ashore in Florida, 56% had anthropogenic debris in their digestive tracts (Bjorndal et al., 1994). Tom_as et al. (2002) found that 75.9% of 54 loggerhead sea turtles (C. caretta) captured by fishermen had plastic debris in their digestive tracts. At least 26 species of cetaceans have been documented to ingest plastic debris (Baird and Hooker, 2000). A young male pygmy sperm whale (Kogia breviceps) stranded alive in Texas, USA, died in a holding tank 11 days later (Tarpley and Marwitz, 1993). The necropsy showed that the first two stomach compartments were completely occluded by plastic debris (garbage can liner, a bread wrapper, a corn chip bag and two other pieces of plastic sheeting). The death of an endangered West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus) in 1985 in Florida was apparently caused by a large piece of plastic that blocked its digestive tract (Laist, 1987). Deaths of the also endangered Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) have too been blamed on plastic debris in their guts (Beck and Barros, 1991). Secchi and Zarzur (1999) blamed the fate of a dead Blainville’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris) washed ashore in Brazil to a bundle of plastic threads found in the animals’ stomach. Coleman and Wehle (1984) and Baird and Hooker (2000) cited other cetaceans that have been reported with ingested plastics, such as the killer whale (Orcinus orca). Some species of fish off the British coast were found to contain plastic cups within their guts that would eventually lead to their death (Anon, 1975). In the Bristol Channel in the summer of 1973, 21% of the flounders (Platichthyes flesus) were found to contain polystyrene spherules (Kartar et al., 1976). The same study found, that in some areas, 25% of sea snails (Liparis liparis) (a fish, despite its common name) were heavily contaminated by such debris. In the New England coast, USA, the same type of spherules were found in 8 out of 14 fish species examined, and in some species 33% of individuals were contaminated (Carpenter et al., 1972). 2.2. Plastics ingestion and polychlorinated biphenyls Over the past 20 years polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have increasingly polluted marine food webs, and are prevalent in seabirds (Ryan et al., 1988). Though their adverse effects may not always be apparent, PCBs lead to reproductive disorders or death, they increase risk of diseases and alter hormone levels (Ryan et al., 1988; Lee et al., 2001). These chemicals have a detrimental effect on marine organisms even at very low levels and plastic pellets could be a route for PCBs into marine food chains (Carpenter and Smith, 1972; Carpenter et al., 1972; Rothstein, 1973; Zitko and Hanlon, 1991; Mato et al., 2001). Ryan et al. (1988) studyingg reat shearwaters (Puffinus gravis), obtained evidence that PCBs in the birds’ tissues were derived from ingested plastic particles. Their study presented the first indication that seabirds can assimilate chemicals from plastic particles in their stomachs, indicatinga dangerous pathway for potentially harmful pollutants. Bjorndal et al. (1994) worked with sea turtles and came to a similar conclusion, that the absorption of toxins as sublethal effects of debris ingestion has an unknown, but potentially great negative effect on their demography. Plastic debris can be a source of other contaminants besides PCBs. Accordingto Zitko (1993) low molecular weight compounds from polystyrene particles are leached by seawater, and the fate and effects of such compounds on aquatic biota are not known. 2.3. Entanglement in plastic debris Entanglement in plastic debris, especially in discarded fishingg ear, is a very serious threat to marine animals. Accordingto Schrey and Vauk (1987) entanglement accounts for 13–29% of the observed mortality of gannets (Sula bassana) at Helgoland, German Bight. Entanglement also affects the survival of the endangered sea turtles (Carr, 1987), but it is a particular problem for marine mammals, such as fur seals, which are both curious and playful (Mattlin and Cawthorn, 1986). Young fur seals are attracted to floating debris and dive and roll about in it (Mattlin and Cawthorn, 1986). They will approach objects in the water and often poke their heads into loops and holes (Fowler, 1987; Laist, 1987). Though the plastic loops can easily slip onto their necks, the lie of the long guard hairs prevents the strapping from slipping off (Mattlin and Cawthorn, 1986). Many seal pups grow into the plastic collars, and in time as it tightens, the plastic severs the seal’s arteries or strangles it (Weisskopf, 1988). Ironically, once the entangled seal dies and decomposes, the plastic band is free to be picked up by another victim (DOC, 1990; Mattlin and Cawthorn, 1986), as some

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014plastic articles may take 500 years to decompose (Gorman, 1993; UNESCO, 1994). Once an animal is entangled, it may drown, have its ability to catch food or to avoid predators impaired, or incur wounds from abrasive or cuttingaction of attached debris (Laist, 1987, 1997; Jones, 1995). According to Feldkamp et al. (1989) entanglement can greatly reduce fitness, as it leads to a significant increase in energetic costs of travel. For the northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus), for instance, they stated that net fragments over 200 g could result in 4-fold increase in the demand of food consumption to maintain body condition. The decline in the populations of the northern sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus), endangered Hawaiian monk seal (Monachus schauinslandi) (Henderson, 1990, 2001) and northern fur seal (Fowler, 1987) seems at least aggravated by entanglement of young animals in lost or discarded nets and packing bands. In the Pribiloff Islands alone, in the BeringSea west of Alaska, the percentage of northern fur seals returning to rookeries entangled in plastic bands rose from nil in 1969 to 38% in 1973 (Mattlin and Cawthorn, 1986). The population in 1976 was decliningat a rate of 4–6% a year, and scientists estimated that up to 40,000 fur seals a year were being killed by plastic entanglement (Weisskopf, 1988). A decline due to entanglement also seems to be occurringwith Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) (Croxall et al., 1990). Pemberton et al. (1992) and Jones (1995) both reported similar concern for Australian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus). At South-east Farallon Island, Northern California, a survey from 1976–1988 observed 914 pinnipeds entangled in or with body constrictions from synthetic materials (Hanni and Pyle, 2000). Lost or abandoned fishingnets pose a particular great risk (Jones, 1995). These ‘‘ghost nets’’ continue to catch animals even if they sink or are lost on the seabed (Laist, 1987). In 1978, 99 dead seabirds and over 200 dead salmon were counted duringthe retrieval of a 1500 m ghost net south of the Aleutian Islands (DeGange and Newby, 1980). In a survey done in 1983/84 off the coast of Japan, it was estimated that 533 fur seals were entangled and drowned in nets lost in the area (Laist, 1987).Whales are also victims, as ‘‘they sometimes lunge for schools of fish and surface with nettingcaug ht in their mouths or wrapped around their heads and tails’’ (Weisskopf, 1988). 2.4. Plastic ‘‘scrubbers’’ Studies (Gregory, 1996; Zitko and Hanlon, 1991) have drawn attention to an inconspicuous and previously overlooked form of plastics pollution: small fragments of plastic (usually up to 0.5 mm across) derived from hand cleaners, cosmetic preparations and airblast cleaningmedia . The environmental impact of these particles, as well as similar sized flakes from degradation of larger plastic litter, has not been properly established yet. In New Zealand and Canada, polyethylene and polystyrene scrubber grains respectively were identified in the cleansingpreparat ions available in those markets, sometimes in substantial quantities (Gregory, 1996). In airblastingtechn ology, polyethylene particles are used for strippingpaint from metallic surfaces and cleaning engine parts, and can be recycled up to 10 times before they have to be discarded, sometimes significantly contaminated by heavy metals (Gregory, 1996). Once discarded they enter into foul water or reticulate sanitary systems, and though some may be trapped during sewage treatment, most will be discharged into marine waters; and as they float, they concentrate on surface waters and are dispersed by currents (Gregory, 1996). There are many possible impacts of these persistent particles on the environment (Zitko and Hanlon, 1991). For instance, heavy metals or other contaminants could be transferred to filter feeding organisms and other invertebrates, ultimately reaching higher trophic levels (Gregory, 1996). 2.5. Drift plastic debris: possible pathway for the invasion of alien species The introduction of alien species can have major consequences for marine ecosystems (Grassle et al., 1991). This biotic mixing is becoming a widespread problem due to human activities, and it is a potential threat to native marine biodiversity (McKinney, 1998). Accordingto some estimates, global marine species diversity may decrease by as much as 58% if worldwide biotic mixing occurs (McKinney, 1998). Plastics floating at sea may acquire a fauna of various encrusting organisms such as bacteria, diatoms, algae, barnacles, hydroids and tunicates (Carpenter et al., 1972; Carpenter and Smith, 1972; Minchin, 1996; Clark, 1997). The bryozoan Membranipora tuberculata, for instance, is believed to have crossed the Tasman Sea, from Australia to New Zealand, encrusted on plastic pellets (Gregory, 1978). The same species together with another bryozoan (Electra tenella) were found on plastics washed ashore on the Florida coast, USA, and they seem to be increasing their abundance in the region by drifting on plastic debris from the Caribbean area (Winston, 1982; Winston et al., 1997). Minchin (1996) also describes barnacles that crossed the North Atlantic Ocean attached to plastic debris. Drift plastics can therefore increase the range of certain marine organisms or introduce species into an environment where they were previously absent (Winston, 1982). Gregory (1991, 1999) pointed out that the arrival of unwanted and aggressive alien taxa could be detrimental to littoral, intertidal and shoreline ecosystems. He emphasised the risk to the flora and fauna of conservation islands, for instance, as alien species could arrive rafted on drifting plastics.

Oil spill and the like pale in compassions to the loss of biodiversity due to marine debris like plastics which risk ocean collapse and mass human deathSielen 13 Alan B., Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was Deputy Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1995 to 2001.

The prospect of vanishing whales, polar bears, bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and wild coasts should be worrying enough on its own. But the disruption of entire ecosystems threatens our very survival, since it is the healthy functioning of these diverse systems that sustains life on earth. Destruction on this level will cost humans dearly in terms of food, jobs, health, and quality of life. It also violates the unspoken promise passed from one generation to the next of a better future. LAYING WASTE The oceans' problems start with pollution, the most visible forms of which are the catastrophic spills from offshore oil and gas drilling or from tanker accidents. Yet as devastating as these events can be, especially locally, their overall contribution to marine pollution pales in comparison to the much less spectacular waste that finds its way to the seas through rivers, pipes, runoff, and the air. For example, trash -- plastic bags, bottles, cans, tiny plastic pellets used in manufacturing -- washes into coastal waters or gets discarded by ships large and small. This debris drifts out to sea, where it forms epic gyres of floating waste, such as the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which spans hundreds of miles across the North Pacific Ocean. The most dangerous pollutants are chemicals. The seas are being poisoned by substances that are toxic, remain in the environment for a long time, travel great distances, accumulate in marine life, and move up the food chain. Among the worst culprits are heavy metals such as mercury, which is released into the atmosphere by the burning of coal and then rains down on the oceans, rivers, and lakes; mercury can also be found in medical waste. Hundreds of new industrial chemicals enter the market each year, most of them untested. Of special concern are those known as persistent organic pollutants, which are commonly found in streams, rivers, coastal waters, and, increasingly, the open ocean. These chemicals build up slowly in the tissues of fish and shellfish and are transferred to the larger creatures that eat them. Studies by the U.S. E nvironmental P rotection A gency have linked exposure to persistent organic pollutants to death, disease, and abnormalities in fish and other wildlife. These pervasive chemicals can also adversely affect the development of the brain, the neurologic system, and the reproductive system in humans.

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014Then there are the nutrients, which increasingly show up in coastal waters after being used as chemical fertilizers on farms, often far inland. All living things require nutrients; excessive amounts, however, wreak havoc on the natural environment. Fertilizer that makes its way into the water causes the explosive growth of algae. When these algae die and sink to the sea floor, their decomposition robs the water of the oxygen needed to support complex marine life. Some algal blooms also produce toxins that can kill fish and poison humans who consume seafood. The result has been the emergence of what marine scientists call "dead zones" -- areas devoid of the ocean life people value most. The high concentration of nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico has created a seasonal offshore dead zone larger than the state of New Jersey. An even larger dead zone -- the world's biggest -- can be found in the Baltic Sea, which is comparable in size to California. The estuaries of China's two greatest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow, have similarly lost their complex marine life. Since 2004, the total number of such aquatic wastelands worldwide has more than quadrupled, from 146 to over 600 today.

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Framing garbage as “out of sight out of mind” not only disregards its effect on ocean life, but positions all things as garbage in waiting—always on the verge of disappearing into the abyss. The treatment of garbage exposes the underbelly of habits of consumption and disposal.Arnshav 14 Mirja, National Maritime Museum, Stockholm. “The Freedom of the Seas: Untapping the Archaeological Potential of Marine Debris,” Journal of Maritime Archaeology. [rcm]

When suddenly bringing the unseen into light, it tends to attract even more attention. Representing something foreign and unexpected, it may stand out as very striking. Further, as been argued by Alfredo González-Ruíbal and others, material culture in general often does appear as very straightforward. Things have the capacity to evoke emotions and make way for an instant understanding in a way that worlds are not always able to do (Burström 2004:21; González-Ruíbal 2008:248–252). When broken and decayed, they might even be greater than the whole, since a fragment (just like in the case with fragment literature, poetry or art) stimulates a wider range of thoughts, associations and feelings, reminding us of the complexity of the world (Burström 2012). Hence, material culture does hold rhetorical qualities (González-Ruíbal 2008; Gustafsson Reinius 2005). Much in accordance with what has been stated above, there are plenty of examples of artistic installations, museum exhibitions and other campaigns, where garbage is used in order to mediate a message (CRRA2011, 2012; Noble and Webster 2011; Schult 2012; Svenska kyrkan 2012; Åkesson 2008:143). Marine debris too lends itself very well for communication purposes. Scientists, journalists, museums and others has used it in order to draw attention to the pressing environmental issue of ocean pollution (Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano2009; Electrolux 2012: Heyerdahl 1993; Hohn 2011; Statens maritima museer 2010; Moore and Phillips2011; Museum für Gestaltung 2012). In archaeology, a prime example would be the Titanic. Considering the high density of history at the site and the fact that it is the final resting place for more than 1500 unlucky travelers, contemporary trash is an affront to its heritage status. However, being such a grand icon, the Titanic offers a perfect stepping stone for attention. At a paper given in Stockholm in 2012, James Delgado argued that one of the greatest archaeological potentials of the Titanic derives from the shocking fact that the wreck site has been littered by recent visitors (MacPherson 2012; Vergano 2012; Fig. 6): When people see the litter they ask: “why are people throwing garbage on the Titanic?” I believe the more important question is: why do people throw garbage in the sea at all? One of the great potentials of the Titanic is that it can help us spark discussions about this (James Delgado 2012-05-30). It is a well known fact that the industrialized world, due to population growth in combination with phenomenons such as mass consumption and throw away living, produces waste on a previously unimaginable scale (Strasser 1999). Archaeologists W.L Rathje and Alfredo González-Ruíbal has pointed to a strong correlation between garbage and “supermodernity” (Agué 2008): “all that does not fit the “global modern” standard is thrown away “(Rathje and González-Ruíbal 2006:7). Designer Mike Thompson has taken the argument one step further, suggesting that all products are garbage in waiting “..all products are garbage, it is the perceived value of the item at that moment that puts the brakes on its procession towards the trash can” (Thompson 2008:3, see also Owman 2006:143–154). Needless to say, the oceans become part of the circuit, receiving a good portion of whatever is produced. In addition to the problem of marine pollution, solid garbage recurrently makes its way to the ocean by means of tsunamis and earthquakes, landfills, river outlets and city sewer systems. In fact, almost all discard will eventually reach the sea, being the lowest place on earth. As been described by Moore: On land, it’s soothing to think that all those bottles and wrappers, all that cheap stuff we handle every day, winds up in a landfill, safely sequestered from polite society. But here in mid-ocean we’re finding hordes of escapees from imperfect collection systems…and seeing flaws in hard-to-enforce international marine pollution laws. All this wayward plastic dreck is beginning to look like civilization’s dirty little secret. Try as we may to control it, to hide it, to manage it – it mocks us and goes where it doesn’t belong (Moore and Phillips 2011 :84). Today, there is a tendency within archaeology to aestheticize and romanticize modern discard and ruins in a nostalgic manner. However, it has been argued that this fascination with modernity in decline and ruin is a bit inapt, as it places modernity itself in the past, making it appear inevitable and benign. An alternative approach would be to embed modernity in the present and emphasize it as an “unfinished project”—as something partial, fragile and unfinished (Harrison 2011:151–152). In addition, garbage and ruins have also been pointed out as a great source material for revealing the destructiveness of globalization and modernity (González-Ruíbal 2006, 2008; Jörnmark 2011). At the Visby event, the nostalgic or aesthetic gaze on garbage was conspicuously absent. On the contrary, the garbage assemblage on show was used as a warning example and a way of stirring up unease. By raising a selection of garbage from its hiding place on the seafloor, a spooky feeling of “presence” of all marine debris was put in appearance (compare Buchli and Lucas 2001a:171–174). In telling contrast to the frolicsome music, the beautiful medieval city of Visby and the traditional wooden sailing ship, it clearly stood out as something smelly, ugly, unnatural, lifeless and potentially dangerous. Figure 7 Drawing from this, the stage was set to promote attitudes with a bearing on environmental sustainability. Finally, this message was further reinforced by the serving of locally produced juices and delicious ecological canapés. Hence, apart from highlighting the issue of marine pollution, a greater ideological dimension of garbage was also being addressed. I this particular case, the garbage was mobilized as an implicit critique against certain aspects of modernity and as a way of propagating an environmentalist mindset. As a science dedicated to the study of physical remains, there is a strong link between archaeology and garbage (Johansson Hervén 2006:124; Shanks et al.2004:6567; Rathje and Murphy 2001). In contrast to history, archaeology has traditionally concerned itself with the ordinary and the everyday. Yet, it is not easy to pin down the ordinary and expose the nature of contemporary life. Many times we are either too habituated to be able to question or even remember it (Rathje and Murphy 2001:24). As been pointed out by Anthony Giddens, we will not ordinarily ask another person why he or she engages in an activity which is conventional for the group or culture of which that individual is a member. It might also be that we are to certain that we already have a good picture of what is going on, or that we surrender to the notion that the agents in question are not fully aware of the motives underpinning his or her actions (Giddens1986:6; Harrison 2011:184). Also, our traditional archaeological methods and theoretical frameworks sometimes appear to be irrelevant and goofy when applied to familiar conditions (Buchli and Lucas 2001b158–168). Other challenges might be a lack of support from colleagues and founders. Still, for those involved in the quest, there might be plenty of thought-provoking conclusions to be drawn. For instance, the archaeology of the contemporary past has shown that there might be a considerable gap between what people think they do and what they actually do (Rathje and Murphy 2001:53–78). What is more, the banal, the obvious and the quotidian are often enough linked to wider concerns such as identity, ideology and cultural behavior.

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014Concealed in the monotonous round of everyday life and the quotidian material culture is the institutional basis of modern society—capitalism, urban civilization, the rule of law and so on. Needless to say, garbage does form part of this unvoiced material testimony of the contemporary. The study of garbage goes beyond the issues of production and consumption. Wasting can be used to shed light on processes of classification, ordering, transformation and stigmatization. It addresses notions about purity and pollution, and it can reveal culturally based decisions about saving or discarding, forgetting or remembering, ignoring or resurrecting (Åkesson 2005b :44). From an archaeological point of view, engagement with garbage may be a way of drawing attention to the overlooked aspects of everyday life, making a useful source material for the understanding of contemporary phenomenon’s. In that regard the study of garbage makes way for ‘the archaeology of us’. Still, marine debris remains unrecognized within underwater archaeology. Due to the preoccupation with shipwrecks, submerged landscapes and maritime strategies of the past the study of the contemporary has largely been neglected. In order to stress the information sought for within the aims of a survey, we do not put effort in documenting the actual surface assemblages, including recent bottles, cans, plastic bags and so on. Of course, all archaeological documentation is inevitably filtered and sanitized. But it is worth underlining that in consequently omitting the recent, we hamper a certain kind of research and mediate a misrepresented picture of a “clean” underwater world, where debris is almost nonexistent or at least at distant from ancient remains. Considering this, the question arises as to what the archaeological potential of marine debris might be? As already been touched upon, the mere praxis of marine dumping can be understood as a widespread illusion that the sea always renews itself and that it has the capacity of making things “disappear” (Patton 2007 :132). But can the debris itself be interpreted in terms of an archaeological record, reflecting certain use-and site related contexts? In order to investigate this, I would like to discuss the case of the deposits on the bottom of a selection of natural harbours in the Stockholm archipelago. Drawing from the results of the Archipelago Foundation’s marine litter harvesting project Surfacing refuse (Skärgårdsstiftelsen 2011a), I have looked into the material culture of five harbours, surveyed during the autumn of 2011 (Skärgårdsstiftelsen 2011b).

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The capacity to trash beings, to annihilate their existence, is not limited to aluminum cans, crustaceans, and seagulls, but is the structuring logic for the dispossession and genocide of all populations.

Kennedy 7 Greg, PhD in philosophy from the university of Ottawa. An Ontology of Trash: The Disposable and Its Problematic Nature. New York: State University of New York Press. pp 154-155

By failing to realize the universal breadth of care, technological uncaring has entangled us moderns in a unique and precarious ethical situation. Simply leading our everyday lives of ordinary consumption causes us to act immorally, that is, implicates us directly in the undue suffering of others. We read the various statistics in the newspaper, but, due to our technological insensitivity and security, the magnitude of their moral condemnation does not impress or disturb us. The industrialized world, containing only 20 percent of the planet's population, helps itself to 80 percent of its natural resources. By all reasonable standards, an inequity of this stature towers as a fearsome monument to violence, especially when set against the very credible argument "that economic growth in the West has historically rested on the economic and ecological exploitation of the Third World."32 These overt demonstrations of violence against humans are symptomatic of a deeper and covert ontological violence at the heart of technological uncaring. By trashing entities, we intend to annihilate their being. Baudrillard simply elaborates the economic imperative for disposability, legitimized by a capitalistic system under the constant threat of overproduction and market saturation, when he writes: The consumer society needs objects in order to be. More precisely, it needs to destroy them. The use of objects leads to their dwindling disappearance. The value created is much more intense in violent loss. This is why destruction remains the fundamental alternative to production: consumption is merely an intermediate term between the two. There is a profound tendency within consumption for it to surpass itself, to transfigure itself in destruction. It is in that that it acquires its meaning.33 The economic meaning of destruction implies relentless capitalistic expansion, whereas the ontological meaning signifies the contraction or withdrawal of Being. The violence of consumption concentrates on the disappearance of beings; when consumed, disposable items are supposed to vanish. Although their material remains, it is willfully denied presence within the contextualized disclosure of the meaningful world. We want no sight of our trash. Jettisoning all responsibility for the physicalness of the commodity, the consumer forcefully falsifies its being. We do not let the disposed disposable appear, do not let it be as it is in the open truth of worldly disclosure. The refusal on our part to let beings be indicates that, once again and at its profoundest level, technological violence essentially assails humans. In other words, the violence of technology is fundamentally ontological because it wrenches us away from our ontological nature. This nature sends us out to take care of things, yet commodities physically hinder, if not altogether prohibit, the manual expression of our essential care. We falsify our own careful being in the destructive disclosure of beings as trash, as evacuated objects not worthy of appearance. When only nothing, not even ourselves, is left to be, then nihilism prevails. The oblivion of Being swallows up our own self-diminished being. Conclusion We have just now caught a glimpse of human extinction. It approached us out of the ontological shadows surrounding the modern phenomenon of trash. In this sense, the ontology of trash comes to appear as the study of the impossibility of ontology. Of course, there could not be any ontology without human inquiry to pursue it. More important, however, there can be no Being without an ontological nature to receive it. In all the many ways discussed, trash is antithetical to nature. It contradicts our careful disclosure. It conceals and dissembles the interdependence of all beings. By so doing, trash expels things from their essence, which consists in referring beyond themselves to the multiplicity of phenomena in such a way as to unify and integrate them into a sensible world. As the result of the abnegation of our own physicality, trash signifies the negation of physicality as such, on which all worldly existence, that is, Being relies. Technology promotes an uncaring way of being-in that, unsurprisingly, discovers objects as uncared for, as disposable. The grand ontological paradox of this is that, a priori trash, the phenomena of disposables counteract every stage of the process of disclosure that makes phenomenal existence possible. Trash thus piles high in free suspension over an abyss of nothing. But this abyss must not be confused with the ultimate emptiness of all beings within the web of its worldly interdependence. This abyss dissolves every relation by destroying the thread that relates all things. Out of this abyss appears the phenomenon of human extinction.

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The United States federal government should substantially increase marine debris monitoring of the Earth’s oceans.

Increased monitoring expands data beyond solely macro-level marine debris

Ryan et al 2009 Peter G. Ryan, Percy FitzPatrick Institute, DST/NRF Centre of Excellence , Charles J. Moore, Algalita Marine Research Foundation, 148 N. Marina Drive, Long Beach, CA 90803 , USA Jan A. van Franeker, Wageningen IMARES and Coleen L. Moloney, Zoology Department and Marine Research Institute, University of Cape Town. “Monitoring the abundance of plastic debris in the marine environment,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science. Vol. 364 no. 1526

If the primary goal is to monitor changes in the amount and composition of plastic debris at sea, direct surveys avoid many of the complications of beach dynamics and contamination by beach users. However, at-sea surveys are complicated by ocean current dynamics, shipboard disposal and accidental loss and are more costly and more challenging logistically, given the intensive sampling needed to detect subtle changes. Surveys at sea are also limited to assessing standing stocks rather than accumulation rates. Changes detected in the amounts of debris are the balance between inputs and losses and do not necessarily reflect the efficacy of mitigation measures to reduce losses of plastics into the environment. (a) Floating and suspended debris The abundance of floating plastics at sea can be estimated either by direct observation of large debris items (e.g. Day et al. 1990a; Matsumura & Nasu 1997; Thiel et al. 2003; Pichel et al. 2007) or by net trawls for smaller items (e.g. Carpenter & Smith 1972; Day & Shaw 1987; Ryan 1988a;Day et al. 1990b; Ogi et al. 1999; Moore, C. J. et al. 2001; Yamashita & Tanimura 2007). Direct observations rely on competent, motivated observers. Studies comparing detection ability show marked differences among observers (e.g. Ryan & Cooper 1989), which needs to be addressed if multiple observers are used to monitor debris at sea. Counts of litter at sea can be used to provide an index of abundance (number of items per unit distance) or an estimate of abundance based on fixed-width or line transects. Fixed-width transects assume that all debris is detected, which is unlikely unless transects are very narrow (e.g. Willoughby et al. 1997). For line transects, the perpendicular distance to each item has to be estimated to compensate for decreasing detection rate with distance from the observer (Buckland et al. 1993). This method assumes that the probability of detection on the transect line is 1, and there are problems with variable detection rates depending on sea state, light conditions and the size, colour and height above water of plastic objects. Observations should be conducted only on that side of the ship with the best viewing conditions. Separate detection curves should be estimated for different sea states, and studies should state the smallest size of items recorded. Most surveys are conducted from ships or small boats, but aerial surveys also have been used to estimate the abundance of plastic litter at sea (Lecke-Mitchell & Mullin 1992) and to locate major aggregations of litter (Pichel et al. 2007). Aerial surveys cover large areas and are less prone to changes in litter detectability linked to wind strength and sea state, but they only detect large litter items. As with ship-based surveys, unless inter-observer effects can be strictly controlled, aerial surveys are more valuable for detecting spatial differences in abundance than for monitoring changes over time. Net-based surveys are less subjective than direct observations but are limited regarding the area that can be sampled (net apertures 1–2 m and ships typically have to slow down to deploy nets, requiring dedicated ship's time). The plastic debris sampled is determined by net mesh size, with similar mesh sizes required to make meaningful comparisons among studies. Floating debris typically is sampled with a neuston or manta trawl net lined with 0.33 mm mesh (figure 3). Given the very high level of spatial clumping in marine litter (e.g. Ryan 1988a; Pichel et al. 2007), large numbers of net tows are required to adequately characterize the average abundance of litter at sea. Long-term changes in plastic meso-litter have been reported using surface net tows: in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in 1999, plastic abundance was 335 000 items km−2 and 5.1 kg km−2 (Moore, C. J. et al. 2001), roughly an order of magnitude greater than samples collected in the 1980s (Day et al. 1990a,b). Similar dramatic increases in plastic debris have been reported off Japan (Ogi et al. 1999). However, caution is needed in interpreting such findings, because of the problems of extreme spatial heterogeneity, and the need to compare samples from equivalent water masses. To date, most studies have sampled floating plastic debris, but some plastics are more dense than seawater, making it important to sample mid-water and bottom loads of plastic debris. Suspended debris can be sampled with bongo nets with a 0.33 mm mesh (Lattin et al. 2004). Few such surveys have been conducted, but data from the eastern North Pacific suggest that the abundance of suspended plastic within 10–30 m of the sea surface averages two orders of magnitude less than that of surface plastics (AMRF, unpublished data). All subsurface net tows should be deployed with a flowmeter to assess the volume of water sampled. The continuous plankton recorder (CPR) offers a valuable subsurface tool to track changes in the distribution and composition of micro-plastic particles at sea, both spatially and temporally (Thompson et al. 2004).(b) Litter on the seabedSurveys of macro-debris loads on the seabed have been conducted with divers (e.g. Donohue et al.2001; Nagelkerken et al. 2001), submersibles and remote-operated vehicles (Galgani et al. 2000) and trawl surveys (e.g. Galil et al. 1995; Galgani et al. 2000; Moore & Allen 2000; Lattin et al.2004; OSPAR Commission 2007b). Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, plastics dominate macro-debris on the sea floor to an extent similar to which they dominate floating litter and beach debris. Just like stranded debris, plastic on the seabed aggregates locally in response to local sources and bottom topography (Galgani et al. 2000; Moore & Allen 2000). The amount of plastic litter is so great in some areas with large amounts of shipping traffic that initiatives have been started to clean the seabed with trawls (OSPAR Commission 2007b), despite concerns about the ecological impacts of trawling. To date, most studies have measured standing stocks of macro-debris, but some accumulation data have been obtained following cleanups of shallow reefs in Hawaii (Boland & Donohue 2003; Dameron et al. 2007). The rate of litter accumulation on these reefs is correlated with initial standing stock and is a function of reef exposure and depth (Dameron et al. 2007). There has been little attention to the abundance of meso- and micro-debris on the seabed. Epibenthic trawls have found substantial plastic loads just above the seabed in shallow coastal waters off southern California (Lattin et al. 2004). Bottom sediments in deeper waters can be sampled with a Van Veen grab or similar device. Micro-plastics have been found in subtidal sediments around the UK and Singapore (Thompson et al. 2004; Ng & Obbard 2006).(c) Best practice for at-sea surveysEffective monitoring of floating plastics at-sea requires huge sample sizes to overcome the very large spatial heterogeneity in plastic litter. Stratified random sampling can help with this issue, but it requires a priori categorization of water masses into the relevant sampling strata. If resources are available, probably the best tool is to sample with neuston nets with a 0.33 mm mesh. Direct observations, often using vessels of opportunity, are less resource-intensive, but are fraught with potential biases linked to differences in litter detectability. Such surveys provide only a crude index of the abundance of floating litter. Much less is known about the distribution and abundance of

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http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Coleen+L.+Moloney&sortspec=date&submit=Submit


http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Jan+A.+van+Franeker&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Charles+J.+Moore&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Peter+G.+Ryan&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014mid-water plastics, but they probably suffer the same sampling problems, with the added complication of even lower abundances. The CPR is a useful tool for long-term subsurface monitoring of micro-particles.Monitoring changes in benthic plastic litter is functionally similar to beach surveys, with the added complication of working underwater. Divers can replicate beach sampling protocols in shallow water, but in deeper waters there are greater issues with quantitatively robust sampling owing to variation in trawl and grab efficiency (linked to substratum type and other local conditions). Trawl nets also become clogged, reducing their efficiency and thus underestimating actual plastic abundance. Remote cameras may provide a more objective sampling strategy for benthic litter.

Our affirmation, more than a rote procedure, is a rupture in habits of consumption, disposal, and moreover an exploration of our relationship with the more-than-human world.

Hawkins 6 Gay, Senior lecturer in media and communications at the University of New South Wales. The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. pp.120-122

Micropolitics emerge in the relational arts of the self, and these arts are always open to the possibility of change. They may not change in big, dramatic, revolutionary ways, but they change. They shift and move because they involve the dynamics of relations and the ongoing work of crafting a self. A recognition of the self as a product of relations and interdependency is not, however, guaranteed. Many of the minor practices we engage in day after day contribute to stabilizing the self, affirming identity through the repetitive reassurance of habits. The relation that is enacted in these habits often involves an arrogant assertion of a sovereign self separated from the world. This "transcendental egoism," as Connolly calls it, blinds us to our dependence on otherness, making it difficult to see how much our identity emerges in and through relations of differentiation. Diprose describes this relation of fundamental dependence in this way: "As one's identity and social value are produced through a differentiation between the self and the other then the identity of the self is dispersed into the other."4 In other examples explored in previous chapters I trace how various waste practices blind us to our dependence on the otherness of waste and our fundamental interconnections with it. The effect of these practices is to deny relationality and interconnection, leading to a cavalier disavowal of the impacts of our waste habits. How then to nurture a micropolitics of the self that is aware of our fundamental interconnections with waste and concerned to manage these connections in careful and sustainable ways? What kinds of tactics and active experimentation would be needed to open up the self to waste, to contest arrogant egoism and the exploitation and destruction it breeds? As I've argued, a first step is to notice waste, to let it capture our attention. For in that momentary glimpse, or shudder, or rush of feeling, a changed relation is enacted. Something flows across the membranes of supposed separation that Patton calls the "connective power of relationality."5 He uses this term to explain Deleuze and Guattari's emphasis on the in-between or the indeterminate conjunction that subtends all relations: and.6 For Deleuze and Guattari the in-between is where things happen, it is a field of emergence. However, recognizing this connection, feeling the relational dynamics in between yourself and waste, is not necessarily enough to transform that relation. It can often lead to a virulent and reactive assertion of separation and mastery. Something else must happen to nurture an ethos of positive engagement with waste, to trigger a relation of openness and care, and to encourage the cultivation of new habits. Perhaps that something is recognition of the how the affective responses that waste can trigger disrupt oppositions between self and world or self and waste. When we notice waste, or when it touches the most visceral registers of being and unsettles us, we are reminded of the body's intensities and multiplicities. These affects can feel like a qualitative overspill, an excess that escapes the knowable, manageable subject. Recognizing the affective dimensions of waste makes trouble for all those epistemologies that begin with the knowing subject ready to act on the world , ready to "do the right thing"; for the affective body does not simply stand as subject to the world's objectivity, it is an "articulated body in transition." This is Brian Massumi's term, and he goes on to explain how affect is relationality, how to be in the world is to be in an everunfolding relation. Affect, then, can disrupt oppositions as it opens us up to the processual rhythms of being. It can allow us to see how we are in and of the world.7 means sensing our similarities and interdependence with waste. It means sensing the inevitability of our own wasting. Wasted things in all their various stages of decay—rotting, broken, abandoned—speak of time and endings. I've argued that to be blind to waste and its materiality is to be blind to death and the fact of loss. The refusal to notice waste is also the refusal to notice the finality of life. In this way, waste defines the scope of ethics. Waste is inevitable, and how we deal with this, what sort of calculations and values we create to make this incontrovertible fact meaningful, is the terrain of ethics. While religion and other grand moral narratives redeem waste and loss with righteous declarations, this is not ethics. Redemption does not necessarily help us live with loss. Its idealism can overprotect us; stop us from accepting the world as it is, stop us from acknowledging the ways in which death is not salvation but part of life. Ethics, rather than traditional moralities, tend to be more modest, more creative, and more relational. This makes them more available to a realistic acknowledgment of finitude, because it's through ethical experimentation in ways of living that it becomes possible to develop an affirmative acceptance of loss, a simple recognition of the contingency of life and the paradoxical interconnections between destruction and renewal. David Halperin has an incisive account of this distinction between ethics and morality in relation to waste: The difference between ethics and morality lies in their differing attitudes to value and to waste. According to a moralistic perspective, life is not wasted if it is lived in the service of value. Value gives transcendental meaning to life and redeems the loss of it. An ethical perspective, by contrast, is one that measures, assesses and adjudicates among the diverse concrete practices of living one's life, the various calculations used to determine how exactly to throw it away.8 What, then, does an ethics of waste that accepts loss look like? If living is shadowed by the reality of death, how might death and loss be acknowledged, and how might this contribute to a positive rather than a destructive ethic of waste? In this chapter I want to explore some examples of waste management that contest the dominant ethos of disposal, distance, and denial. These examples reflect not only active experimentation but also a different relational dynamic between the self and waste, a concern to manage waste in ways that I are attentive to what Adam Phillips calls "the arts of transience."9

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014Exploring trash reframes what was initially inert dead matter into an active political force and exposes the full extent of its entanglement with oceanic and terrestrial life, breaking the myth of an infinite ocean in which to hide our collective trash.

Arnshav 14 Mirja, National Maritime Museum, Stockholm. “The Freedom of the Seas: Untapping the Archaeological Potential of Marine Debris,” Journal of Maritime Archaeology. [rcm]

In this paper I have tried to tie together garbage studies (including garbology), archaeology of the contemporary past and maritime archaeology in order to chisel out a space for research that involves marine debris. Although I have just scratched the surface of such a study area, I claim maritime garbology to be not just a possible but also a relevant and meaningful field of research. The examples processed briefly in this paper points towards a number of conclusions. Marine dumping stands out as a long term maritime structure and an unregulated waste disposal practice, existing off the record and beyond the focus of most garbage scholars. It ranges from habitual actions like cargo sweeping to the spontaneous acts of everyday people. The discussion on marine dumping and the underpinnings of the strategy implies a widespread human illusion; namely that the sea can “take it”, that it can make our discard “disappear”. Obviously, “thrown away” is nothing but a chimera: there is no “away”. As is clear from the evidence from the Swedish natural harbours, praised for their high natural values, modern debris is all over the place (under the surface that is). On the basis of this record, revealing several aspects of boating lifestyle, it is suggested that marine debris with a known context may be a useful archaeological record for grasping practices and every-day actions associated with the site. As illustrated in the section on the environmentalist event at Visby, marine debris raised from obscurity and oblivion may also be turned into powerful symbols and actants. As such it enables tangible symbol communication and affects our feelings, thoughts and actions. Within this context, its “archaeological” qualities of ruination, abandonment and (normally) invisibility are significant, forming the basis for a telling effect. Overall, the cases discussed in the paper all suggest that the study of marine debris as material culture opens for a number of discussions as regards entanglement with the sea and humanity’s relation to garbage. It has the potential of recapturing a hidden part of our social history and everyday life of today. In particular, it seems to underline the existence of an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality and point to a certain discord between the mental seascape and the real one. However, studies of marine debris must not necessarily be not interpretative in the sense archaeology usually tackles a record. For example, the seafloor—where modern debris intermingles with ancient remains—does not match the common modernist trope of depth in archaeology (archaeology-as-excavation), and the associated notions of the past as being buried, closed, distant and alienated from the present (Harrison 2011; Latour 1993; Thomas 2004:27–29). Considering that such notions probably have had a restraining effect on the archaeology of the recent past, the seafloor should make a perfect laboratory for reorientation and testing of alternative approaches (i.e. Harrison 2011). Another benefit of a maritime garbology is its potential to add to the understanding of the nested relationship between nature and culture, and illustrate how environmental humanities can contribute to the challenges of our time. It clearly shows that although the sea may appear as a non articulated territory and one of the last wildernesses, reality is quite different. The importance of studying of marine garbage may stretch beyond an archaeological concern with artefacts. In the end, containers and solid garbage may not only be a hazard to marine life—it also changes the conditions for it. Forming artificial reefs it may have a good impact on biodiversity. Along shipping lanes it may also create stepping stones of hard substratum across muddy expansive seascapes, allowing alien species—environmental harmful as well as beneficial—to move from one area to another (Haifley 2011). In the Anthroposcene, the deeper causes of environmental change are to be found in culture and in our everyday practices. A maritime garbology should be well suited to counterbalance and complement the dominant natural science discourse on environmental change and sustainability (compare Robin 2011, 2006; Robin and Steffen 2007; Sörlin 2012). In addition, marine debris is also well placed for shading light on matters swept under the carpet, and might be used as a stepping stone for addressing burning issues. As clear from this study, there is a political dimension of garbage. Such entanglement is not unfamiliar to the archaeology of the contemporary past. On the contrary, it has been argued that political commitment lies at the heart of the archaeology of the contemporary (González-Ruíbal 2008:259–261). As been stated by the famous Garbage Project, commenting on the political environmentalist discourse as suffering from a general lack of understanding and serious misconceptions on the garbage situation: The most critical part of the garbage problem in America is that our notions about the creation and disposal of garbage are often riddled with myth. There are few other subjects of public significance on which popular and official opinion is so consistently misinformed. (Rathje and Murphy 2001:28). This quotation surly applies to marine conditions too. As regards garbage, “The silent world” still has its secrets. A maritime garbology has the potential to investigate a range of matters—from the pleasure associated with a splash to the destructiveness of modernity.

Rather than just a waste management proposal fixated with bureaucratic adjustments, our affirmation reasserts waste as part of our political ecology and is a pre-requisite for any meaningful political intervention. Gregson and Crang 10 Nicky, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield and Mike, Department of Geography, Durham University. “Materiality and waste: inorganic vitality in a networked world,” Environment and Planning A., Vol. 42 Is. 5

At a first level, the papers in this theme issue provide a contribution to the diversity and vitality of current waste scholarship. At another level they are a means to moving waste scholarship to a fuller engagement with materiality.i Our starting point here is a paradox. Waste is intrinsically, profoundly, a matter of materiality and yet – notwithstanding a sustained engagement with materiality in certain areas of the social sciences of late – much of what is most readily identified as waste research remains staunchly immaterial. Just as much as societies have sought to distance themselves from and hide their wastes for fear of contamination, so academia has been shy of the stuff of waste. Predominantly, social science work identifies waste in terms of waste management; a move which ensures that waste is defined by, and discussed in terms of, ‘disposal’ technologies, or – more correctly – waste treatments, and their connection to policy. The stuff of waste therefore is translated into treatment technologies - principally the established ones of incineration and landfill but also emergent technologies such as anaerobic digestion. Or, it is reconfigured as resource recovery, that is, as recycling, re-use and re-manufacturing. Thence, for the most part, it is translated into metrics – tonnes and targets. To modify Zygmant Bauman’s paraphrasing of Marx, with waste all that is solid (or indeed liquid) tends to melt, if not into air, into the register of the

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014categorical. Further, the radical separation of waste as material and matter from a policy world of tonnes and targets inscribes itself into clear academic divisions of labour. Hence, waste in the social sciences has hitherto been the primary concern of environmental policy and urban planning, whilst stuff and its treatment remains the preserve of the technical and thus the domain of engineering. The matter of waste becomes fixed and limited through management. Caught within a teleological fix, that which is managed as waste is waste, and that which is waste is what is managed. Waste’s identification with waste management, specifically its translation into the categories and policies of waste management, is a manoeuvre which places the field firmly in accord with Latour’s ‘moderns’. In keeping with that we find much work that problematises waste does so at the level of the categorical rather than opening out its ontological politics. So, albeit that there are considerable differences between work which seeks to evaluate policy outcomes (Davoudi, 2000; Petts, 2000, 2004) and that which has moved waste debate into the conceptual terrain defined by governance (Davoudi, 2009) and governmentality (Fagan, 2004; Bulkeley et ai, 2007), these two force fields within waste scholarship remain firmly in the realms of humans acting on the world (cf. Hillier, 2009). In the first body of work, the field is defined by end-of-pipe policy, and focuses on the identification of ‘barriers to’ as the primary means to engage with waste policy. Policy outcomes are what matters here, but - as Bulkeley et ai (2007) remark- such thinking perpetuates a ‘linear, techno-economic model’ of the policy process, divorcing policy making from policy intervention. It also, we argue, works to locate waste policy research at the furthest remove of all ‘end-of-pipe’ policies. In Bulkeley et al’ s own work these difficulties are addressed by turning to the literature on modes of governing, with its focus on governmental technologies as deployed by agencies in institutional relations. Through their analysis of UK municipal waste authorities, Bulkeley et ai identify four modes of acting on the world with respect to UK waste — disposal, diversion, eco- efficiency and resource. Yet, notwithstanding its conceptual sophistication, in this work, as in the earlier work of Davoudi and Petts, waste just is: it is the stuff that is being governed, or that which is the outcome of policy. Black-boxed, manipulated, treated, distributed, and contested, it is policy, its categories, governing and campaigning which are the primary agents here, and where all the interest lies. The focus upon governance can be inverted, to ask how it is that various forms of matter have different affordances and become governed differently under different regimes (Gille, 2007). Alternately the different incarnations of waste can be used to suggest the situational and relational character of the category ‘waste.’ Far from being fixed in advance, waste is seen as historically mutable, geographically contingent and both expressive of social values and sustaining to them. Symbolic analysis from Mary Douglas onwards has shown how waste and dirt is defined as impure and reputationally damaging. Judith Williamson (1987) elegantly demonstrated this around the adverts for a vacuum cleaner, that offered to clean ‘all three kinds of dirt’ – where the technology miraculously became the solution to problems posed by its own advertising’s classification of uncleanly matter. Here the symbolic comes to define various materials more or less arbitrarily as waste in ways that suite society. But, what is polluting waste in one society may not be treated so in another time and place. From this it flows that categories and social orders use materials but are not determined by those materials. This liberating move from waste as a self-evident category to waste as a social construction therefore begs the question of how different matters matter differently.

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Bureaucratic solutions to waste management foreclose the necessary affective response to trash—trash must be noticed not sequestered as something to be hidden away. Positioning trash as something that works on human and ocean life as much as we work on it cultivates an ethic towards the more-than-human world.

Hawkins ‘6 Gay, Senior lecturer in media and communications at the University of New South Wales. The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. pp. 73-75

In exploring the dynamic exchanges between subjects and objects, Sebald captures the translations and displacements that shape human relations with the material world. Ornaments, utensils, dumped car wrecks, mattresses— objects that have outlived their former owners—have what Bill Brown calls "history in them."5 Their dislocation and uncanny presence as remainders makes the traces of their former uses and human attachments visible. Sebald's abandoned things speak of the full magnitude of what happened. He uses cultural debris to confront the past not as moral lesson but as a source of philosophical reflection about loss, destruction, and grief. His "method," if you can call it that, is a powerful evocation of Walter Benjamin's materialist history. For Sebald, like Benjamin, is interested in the phenomenological hermeneutics of cultural debris.6 Sebald shows what can happen when you notice waste, when you pay close attention to its presence. Suddenly, discarded objects appear animate and able to make claims on us. By refusing to other waste, to reduce it to structure or metaphor, Sebald implicates waste's materiality in questions of affect and ethics. Could the recognition of waste as things change our relations with it? Could it lead to different forms of materialism less concerned with the vagaries of desire or disposability? What would an ethics of waste mean for our material habitus, for how we actually live with things? This chapter explores these questions. While its inspiration is Sebald, its examples are two extraordinary films: Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I and Walpiri Media's Bush Mechanics. In both these films people engage with waste. While their motivation is often scarcity and need, the material practices they invent involve an openness to the thingness of waste. It is the possibility of transformation and misuse that makes waste available to other systems of objectification. But you have to be willing to see and feel this. Inventing a new materialism involves a responsiveness to objects that is mutually transformative of both people and things . 7 Waste captures the attention not simply of those in desperate need but also of those able to imagine different uses, able to reanimate it. This is where necessity meets creativity and where ethics meet imagination. Before we look at these films, the value of thinking about waste as things needs to be considered more carefully. This takes us into the realm of material culture and thing theory. Theories of material culture show how history and biography apply to things. They show how the work of consumption and exchange creates value and how material forms can be coded and receded to satisfy human needs and desires. This work is invaluable for reminding us how human uses give objects instrumental status. But is there a realm of thingness that exists beyond this material object world? Is there a point where things cannot be reduced to objects, where their presence is asserted in ways that disrupt their object status? And could this nascent thingness be a potential source of different, more ecologically aware practices? According to Bill Brown, we glimpse thingness in irregularities of exchange, in moments when objects stop working for us, or when we are not quite sure how to identify: all situations that could easily describe waste.8 These experiences involve an encounter with the anterior physicality of the world, with the sensuous presence that exceeds the materialization and utilization of objects. These are experiences of objects asserting themselves as things, when things provoke and incite, when they capture our attention and demand to be noticed. And in these chance interruptions, these "occasions of contingency" as Brown calls them, different relations surface: "The story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relation to the human subject and thus the story of how the thing really names less an object than a particular subject-object relation."9 This approach shifts the focus from material culture's anthropological inflections to phenomenology and philosophy. Brown is concerned less with the social life of objects than with how things become "recognizable, representable and exchangeable to begin with," with the mutual constitution of human subject and inanimate object.10 Elizabeth Grosz's account of the thing takes a similar approach. Like Brown, she is interested in how things assert themselves and how we become enmeshed with them, and she draws on pragmatist philosophers to make her case. Darwin, William James, Bergson, Rorty, and Deleuze all, in different ways, put questions of action and practice at the center of ontology. Here the thing features as a resource for being. We make things with it, leave our trace on it, but this does not mean that the thing is subordinate to human action. For the thing has a "life" of its own that we must accommodate in our activities. "The thing poses questions to us, questions about our needs and desires, questions above all of action: the thing is our provocation to action and is itself a result of our action."11 Although Grosz doesn't argue this, in her schema things are irrevocably implicated in ethics. For if things pose questions to us then they must also be capable of making us consider what we do. What, then, of waste? Theories of material culture show us the role of circulation and use in the creation and destruction of value; they illuminate the human and social contexts of objects in motion. But what happens when objects stop moving, when they get stuck on the verge abandoned or when they turn into urban debris? Thing theory explores how the latency of thingness might surface in these moments when objectification breaks down. For if the thing is always a kind of remainder, so too is waste, hence the potential of waste to remind us of the liminality between useful and useless, object and thing. If we noticed waste as things, what sort of new material relations and practices might this trigger? When waste is framed as dead objects and relegated to its proper place in the dump or garbage truck it often fails to provoke. It poses no questions to us because it has been regulated and rendered passive and out of sight. Waste as dead objects throws up few possibilities, but waste as things is full of promise, full of the possibilities of becoming a resource for being.

Before entertaining the speculation of human extinction attune your decision to a response to the continual killing and extinction of non-human life. An affective rejoinder requires a care, not for trash, but for its affects in the world.

Yusoff 2k10

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014(Kathryn Yusoff Lecturer in Human (and Non-human) Geography, and Director of the MA in Climate Change at the University of Exeter. Theory Culture Society 27.2-3, 2010)

If, as Haraway says, ‘Animals are everywhere full partners in worlding, in becoming with’ (2008: 301), what kind of colleagues are we to be in our shared experience of climate change? And, furthermore, how might we be better colleagues with the life forces of the biosphere? In the ubiquitous iconography of polar bears, our colleagues might seem to be getting short shrift in the presenting and practising of their complexity. Polar bears have become somewhat generic, ordered into taxonomies, ranked by perceived importance, isolated from the habitats that make their worlds, and the lively relationalities in which they are already situated. Or they are too located in our narratives of their worlds (forever swimming in the sea of melting ice) to allow them any other spaces to practise in. Yet, if nothing else, to represent is to assume responsibility for, to decide not to occlude, and thus, in some way, to care. And this care, or non-human charisma as Jamie Lorimer characterizes it, provides ‘the vital motivating energy that compels many people to get involved in biodiversity conservation’ (2007: 927). But, making present is a tricky business (and only half of the ethical story). How to make those significant others that are the silent recipients of violence in an era of anthropogenic-induced climate change present and visible to the imagination is a question for all who are concerned about the barely visible sites of destruction that constitute the experience of climate change. In this equation of absence-presence, the archive and archival impulses are important because they represent the prevalent attitude towards the diversity and dynamism of life on earth. The archival impulse is a well-established historical cultural practice, which has consistently been used to approach and respond to life, predominantly through the organization of its dead subjects. Attention to how biopolitical worlds are ordered through the archival principle is crucial to the possibility of ethics, of living with rather than against (in-)significant others. So aesthetics clearly does matter in the biopolitics of multispecies living, with often remote and absent communities of human and non-human others. But, how does it matter? What and where are the spaces of this biopolitical aesthetic? And what kinds of careful aesthetic practices open spaces to configure a more exuberant and full politics of climate change? And, finally, in being careful, can we afford to repress the violence that is so clearly part of this relating? Might violence open another unexpected route into an ethical relation? If we know anything about abrupt climate change from ice cores and paleo-records, the impact of change has been experienced as a series of mass extinction events: the Holocene, Cretaceous-Peleogene, Triassic- Jurassic, etc. To imagine the world without us – as one possible climate future – is to imagine our own extinction event, much as Beckett did in ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ (1965). But before we ever get to such an end game, we must imagine the world as it is: as a world of diminishing non- human others, a world in which certain songs and calls and whoops are quieting. As the force of these animal entities lessens, in the creative and destructive acts that constitute the ‘play of the world’, this means not just their extinction but also the extinction of the aspects of our lives that are co-constituted through these aesthetic experiences of the world. That is to say, while climate change is the big narrative of the anthropocene, with carbon as the central player, there is not an adequately developed discourse that describes the interdependence of multispecies flourishing and destruction within climate change. Furthermore, the conceptualization of climate change as a human-centred, human-instigated global practice (i.e. a world- forming practice) does not properly represent the biophysical world as an already full space of that which is not exclusively ‘ours’ to make. I want to argue for an aesthetics that is playful, pertaining to sensuous perception of the ‘play of the word’ and an aesthetics that is politically engaged as a practice in politicizing ecologies and structuring what ecologies enter politics (i.e. the political organization of life). Whereas Frederic Jameson went searching for the ‘political unconscious’ that haunts aesthetics (Jameson, 1981: 17; see also Jameson, 1992), following Michel Foucault (1990[1984]; see also O’Leary, 2002), I argue that aesthetics must be considered as part of the practice of politics; a space where things are made, both materially and semiotically (to paraphrase Haraway) and a space that configures the realm of what is possible in that politics. Foucault referred to this as the search for an ‘aesthetics of existence’ (1990[1984]: 49). Aesthetics is, in Foucault’s terms, fundamentally biopolitical. Alongside this connection between aesthetics and politics as a space in which ecologies are made, there are various kinds of loss and violence that are an attendant part of anthropogenic-induced climate change, which generate a social urgency to these questions of representation and violence, aesthetics and existence. The article, then, is organized into three sections that question the perception, production and spheres of action that the political aesthetics of climate change articulate for multispecies living. The first section looks at Jacques Rancière’s concept of political aesthetics in order to extend an argument about the importance of aesthetics in multispecies living beyond a concentration on practices into a consideration of how the distribution of the sense experience is crucial to the political spaces of biopolitics. This is followed by a discussion of Bataille’s more energetic ontology on the exuberance and destructiveness that inheres in biological life on earth. The second section looks at a range of archival practices that are employed to order and represent the loss of biodiversity as a consequence of climate change, particularly the animal species and animal spaces where biopolitics are made. Against this scene of animal destruction, I want to look at George Bataille’s more chaotic ledger for approaching our archives of destruction. His energetic thinking suggests how to make the ‘exuberance of presence’ part of the intimate and ethical contract we have with destruction. As such, if we consign the violence of climate change to the archive – our normative economies of representation – we might forgo the possibility of a proper relationship with that violence that might yet moderate its scope. To paraphrase Bataille (1991a: 23), what is at stake here in a restricted framing of economies (of life) is that we are forced to undergo violence rather than to bring it about in our own way, if we understood that violence more fully. The conclusion considers how a biopolitical aesthetic comes into being Through such archival practices, and asks what aesthetic shifts would make the ‘play of the world’ more present ini ts absences during a time of abrupt climatic change. The strange couple of Rancière and Batailleis brought together here,because Rancière articulates a way of thinking about aesthetics as crucial to creating spaces of politics, and Bataille gives us the fullness of aesthetic experience as a corporeal expenditure that bears on our every ethical relation to and in the world. Their thinking is by no means commensurable, but it does

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014create a (shaky)bridge between the intimacies of experiencing loss in the ‘play of the world’ and biopolitical understandings of the distribution of sense experience in the politics of climate change. Furthermore, Bataille’s archival or taxonomic approaches to thinking (discussed below) show us one space where we can begin making other biopolitical futures. And Rancière’s thinking on the distribution of the sensible as a condition of the visibility and invisibility of political aesthetics suggests a way to practice this. For both thinkers, political aesthetics are configured around fidelity to the event or experience, which means in the context of climate change an engagement with the banal violence of systematic destruction. There are three themes that situate this discussion of animality in the context of climate change. First, the consideration of aesthetics as a form of ethics, that is, an ‘aesthetics of existence’ (Foucault, 1990[1984]). Second, the dual economy of excess as articulated by Bataille, that pitches the restricted economy of banal, unthought excess of late industrial modernity that participates in the wholesale destruction of environments against the excess of exuberance (and experience) that is both violent and vital to the generosity of life, but is often excluded. The form of this article attempts a fidelity to the aesthetics of excess and existence; thus it seeks to discreetly break off from academic critique into other forms of engagement with animality.

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Case Extensions

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XT: Inherency Plan is necessary—recent funding cuts jeopardize pollution research

Migliaccio ‘14Emily Migliaccio. Legal Extern at Vermont Supreme Court. 2014. “The National Ocean Policy: Can it Reduce Marine Pollution and Streamline Our Ocean Bureaucracy?” Vermont Journal of Environmental Law 15. Pages 653-654.

Arguably one of the most important areas of the NOP is in the promotion and support for research and education on marine issues. The JOC gave this category a “C” because although some progress had been made, there had been “funding and program cuts, as well as delayed implementation of critical tools, weakened ocean science, research, and education.”170 One of the greatest improvements in this area was the installation of the data portal, ocean.data.gov, which “serves as a clearinghouse for access to non-confidential federal ocean data and planning tools.”171 There have also been “strong regional efforts to coordinate on regional ocean and coastal research, observing, mapping, and restoration priorities.”172However, more is needed in terms of funding and support for further education. Investments in research, science, and education on ocean and coastal issues are crucial, particularly in the context of marine pollution, because it will “produce a more informed citizenry; create better stewards of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources; and increase awareness of business opportunities related to these resources.” 173 With a greater knowledge base, people can participate in activities that address the issues facing our oceans and coasts. Furthermore, an educational system that incorporates ocean and coastal science is crucial to ensuring that the next generation of ocean scientists and engineers are sufficiently trained “to continue to lead an innovation-based global economy.”174 Country-wide education would also bring more awareness to the pervasive interconnectivity of land and marine pollution, and hopefully illuminate the need for efforts across the nation, rather than just on the coasts.

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XT: Inherency More monitoring is necessary—effects of marine pollution are under-researched

Oehlmann et al 9 Jörg Oehlmann1, Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Ulrike Schulte-Oehlmann, Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology , Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Werner Kloas, Department of Inland Fisheries , Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. Oana Jagnytsch, Department of Inland Fisheries , Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. Ilka Lutz, Department of Inland Fisheries. , Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. Kresten O. Kusk, Department of Environmental Engineering , Technical University of Denmark. Leah Wollenberger, Department of Environmental Engineering , Technical University of Denmark. Eduarda M. Santos, School of Biosciences, Hatherly Laboratories , University of Exeter. Gregory C. Paull, School of Biosciences, Hatherly Laboratories , University of Exeter. Katrien J. W. Van Look, Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London. Charles R. Tyler, School of Biosciences, Hatherly Laboratories. A critical analysis of the biological impacts of plasticizers on wildlife. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Vol. 364 No. 1526.

Given that the biological effect concentrations for plasticizers seen in the laboratory coincide with environmental concentrations, some wildlife populations are probably impacted. To date, however, studies investigating population effects have not been reported, and this constitutes a significant knowledge gap. Furthermore, for invertebrate phyla most highly sensitive to the biological effects of specific plasticizers, long-term exposures should be considered as a research priority. However, only a very limited number of invertebrate phyla have been tested for the effects of phthalates and BPA, and representatives from other, presently neglected, taxa should be considered in the future, including terrestrial species. Mixture effects of plasticizers, as of many other environmental pollutants, are also a much neglected area of study, and given that there are likely to be additive effects, this warrants investigations to assess more accurately their impacts in the environment (see discussion in Koch & Calafat 2009; Teuten et al. 2009; Thompson et al. 2009b). As a final note, increasingly, investigations into the mechanisms of action of plasticizers are finding that some (e.g. phthalates) can have multiple interaction sites in the body, affecting a wide range of biological processes (see discussion in Meeker et al. 2009; Talsness et al. 2009). Thus, a more thorough understanding of the modes of action of these chemicals will help in developing a more comprehensive understanding of their potential for harm and in the identification of the species most vulnerable to their biological effects.

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http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Charles+R.+Tyler&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Katrien+J.+W.+Van+Look&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Katrien+J.+W.+Van+Look&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Gregory+C.+Paull&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Eduarda+M.+Santos&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Leah+Wollenberger&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Kresten+O.+Kusk&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Ilka+Lutz&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Oana+Jagnytsch&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Werner+Kloas&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=Ulrike+Schulte-Oehlmann&sortspec=date&submit=Submit

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1526/2047.full#aff-1

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/search?author1=J%C3%B6rg+Oehlmann&sortspec=date&submit=Submit


XT: Mechanism Solvency Marine debris regulations are coming, monitoring and information gathering are needed to address policy implementation

Naylor ‘13 Anna S.R., Masters of Marine Management from Dalhousie University. Integrated Ocean management: Making local global: the role of monitoring in reaching national and international commitments. August 2013 http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/37034/Naylor,%20A%20-%20Graduate_Project2013.pdf?sequence=1

Today, there are many countries that have their own ocean management plans either at a national and/or regional level that aim to meet various national/international commitments or targets (United Nations, 2008). Those that are signatory to international treaties such as the Law of the Sea or the Convention on Biological Diversity should be using them as a guidelines to direct their national or regional efforts and programs. This can ensure that they are meeting the international standards and targets. Where traditional management may have failed before to prevent environmental and ecological loss or degradation, new forms of management can allow for a more successful approach to conservation . Such a method is an integrated structure that can be multi-species, cross sectorial and more comprehensive (Knoi, 2010). Many countries have formally adopted integrated management as the new approach to ocean management, involving in-depth science, interested stakeholders, and the co-management of multiple industries that have affects on one another or the environment. Included within integrated management is the ability to understand and measure the level of success of different policies or action plans. The monitoring process can allow managers to create indicators that can be used to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of a developed policy and make changes where needed (Day, 2008). The use of proper ecosystem indicators within monitoring can ensure that the policy is being implemented to meet its goals and that it remains adaptive and up to date . However connecting regional ocean management plans to the larger scale can be difficult without proper indicators or proper structure. Ideally the goals and objectives of a regional plan should either coordinate or be a means for the country to meet its national programs and/or international commitments. However, the links between the regional and national are sometimes unclear, or missing altogether, making it harder for decision makers to a) reach these national and international commitments and b) measure the success that these regional management action plans or policies are having.

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XT: Mechanism Solvency

Monitoring is key to completing policy goal and is a pre-requisite to any meaningful policy

Naylor ‘13 Anna S.R., Masters of Marine Management from Dalhousie University. Integrated Ocean management: Making local global: the role of monitoring in reaching national and international commitments. August 2013 http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/37034/Naylor,%20A%20-%20Graduate_Project2013.pdf?sequence=1

Monitoring , in the broadest sense, is defined as the routine measurement of chosen indicators to understand the condition and trends of the various components of an ecosystem (Bisbal, 2001). It is an important part of any policy as it allows for two parts. First, it allows for a community or government to monitor the changing state and resiliency of the relevant coastal and marine systems. This includes both the biophysical components as well as the human dimensions (Kearney et al., 2007). Second, it also allows managers to assess the extent to which said policy is working in practice at the various levels (local or national). To be able to properly monitor ocean and coastal policies, objectives and goals need to be clearly defined so developing and utilizing appropriate indicators can be used to track changes over time. There are three categories that indicators can be used for: social, ecological and governance. The ecological and social indicators can only be judged as a matter of outcomes and impacts. These ecological outcomes and or impacts could include the monitoring of improved water quality, fish stocks, and habitat loss. Social indicators could include both the monitoring of increased public access to beaches and increased/decreased employment. Ocean management policies are implemented but the monitoring and evaluation aspects are sometimes lacking, inhibiting the plan from reaching its full potential of being both effective and efficient. Proper and accurate monitoring is an essential pre-cursor to evaluation. The evaluation of these indicators subsequently allows them to be analysed to determine the progress towards the key goals and objectives of an ocean management policy. The use of proper ecosystem indicators in monitoring can ensure that the policy is being implement to meet is original goals and objectives. It also allows for the plan to remain adaptive and up to date provided that a review of the information is in a timely manner.

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XT: Mechanism Solvency

Any effective debris policy must be preceded by debris monitoring which is key to inform stakeholders

Liu et al. ‘13 Ta-Kang Liu, of the Institute of Ocean Technology and Marine Affairs, national Cheng University. Meng-Wei Wang, and Ping Chen. “Influence of waste management policy on the characteristics of beach litter in Kaohsiung, Taiwan,” Marine Pollution Bulletin Is 72

In the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference, the Honolulu Strategy was formulated: it aimed to address the issue of marine debris at the global, national and local levels (UNEPINOAA, 2011). The Honolulu Strategy aimed to ‘develop, strengthen, and enact legislation and policies to support solid waste minimization and management”. The waste hierarchy (i.e. reduce, reuse and re cycle, in the order of importance) classifies waste management strategies according to their desirability (Kreith and Tchohanoglous, 2002). If the wastes can be properly reduced, reused and recycled, the chance for them to enter the marine environment can be greatly abated. In this study, policies under Taiwan’s Waste Dis posal Act and Resource Recycling Act show the indirect result that improved solid waste management can alleviate the problems of marine debris. However, the volumes of trash that keep appearing on beaches indicate that there is still room for better solid waste management. It is possible that a lack of consistent monitoring and identification of sources of debris may hamper the implementation of effective control measures for source reduction CUS Ocean Commission, 2004). Monitoring helps policy-makers to design management measures that address the most prevalent forms of debris, as well as those that cause the most harmful effects in the marine environment In addition, the comprehensive enforcement of policies and regulations concerning individual behavior would be impractical: it is necessary to pursue a long-term education campaign for the general public in order to guide people and communities regarding the correct way to dispose of waste. Education campaigns should also extend to target specific stakeholders that are prone to generate marine debris, such as coastal recreational operators, packaging companies and the fishing industry, such as Tainan’s oyster culture fishery in this study.

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XT: Mechanism Solvency New surveys will provide comprehensive mapping of ocean ecologies

Ryan et al 2009 Peter G. Ryan, Percy FitzPatrick Institute, DST/NRF Centre of Excellence , Charles J. Moore, Algalita Marine Research Foundation, 148 N. Marina Drive, Long Beach, CA 90803 , USA Jan A. van Franeker, Wageningen IMARES and Coleen L. Moloney, Zoology Department and Marine Research Institute, University of Cape Town. “Monitoring the abundance of plastic debris in the marine environment,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science. Vol. 364 no. 1526

If the primary goal is to monitor changes in the amount and composition of plastic debris at sea, direct surveys avoid many of the complications of beach dynamics and contamination by beach users. However, at-sea surveys are complicated by ocean current dynamics, shipboard disposal and accidental loss and are more costly and more challenging logistically, given the intensive sampling needed to detect subtle changes. Surveys at sea are also limited to assessing standing stocks rather than accumulation rates. Changes detected in the amounts of debris are the balance between inputs and losses and do not necessarily reflect the efficacy of mitigation measures to reduce losses of plastics into the environment. (a) Floating and suspended debris The abundance of floating plastics at sea can be estimated either by direct observation of large debris items (e.g. Day et al. 1990a; Matsumura & Nasu 1997; Thiel et al. 2003; Pichel et al. 2007) or by net trawls for smaller items (e.g. Carpenter & Smith 1972; Day & Shaw 1987; Ryan 1988a;Day et al. 1990b; Ogi et al. 1999; Moore, C. J. et al. 2001; Yamashita & Tanimura 2007). Direct observations rely on competent, motivated observers. Studies comparing detection ability show marked differences among observers (e.g. Ryan & Cooper 1989), which needs to be addressed if multiple observers are used to monitor debris at sea. Counts of litter at sea can be used to provide an index of abundance (number of items per unit distance) or an estimate of abundance based on fixed-width or line transects. Fixed-width transects assume that all debris is detected, which is unlikely unless transects are very narrow (e.g. Willoughby et al. 1997). For line transects, the perpendicular distance to each item has to be estimated to compensate for decreasing detection rate with distance from the observer (Buckland et al. 1993). This method assumes that the probability of detection on the transect line is 1, and there are problems with variable detection rates depending on sea state, light conditions and the size, colour and height above water of plastic objects. Observations should be conducted only on that side of the ship with the best viewing conditions. Separate detection curves should be estimated for different sea states, and studies should state the smallest size of items recorded. Most surveys are conducted from ships or small boats, but aerial surveys also have been used to estimate the abundance of plastic litter at sea (Lecke-Mitchell & Mullin 1992) and to locate major aggregations of litter (Pichel et al. 2007). Aerial surveys cover large areas and are less prone to changes in litter detectability linked to wind strength and sea state, but they only detect large litter items. As with ship-based surveys, unless inter-observer effects can be strictly controlled, aerial surveys are more valuable for detecting spatial differences in abundance than for monitoring changes over time. Net-based surveys are less subjective than direct observations but are limited regarding the area that can be sampled (net apertures 1–2 m and ships typically have to slow down to deploy nets, requiring dedicated ship's time). The plastic debris sampled is determined by net mesh size, with similar mesh sizes required to make meaningful comparisons among studies. Floating debris typically is sampled with a neuston or manta trawl net lined with 0.33 mm mesh (figure 3). Given the very high level of spatial clumping in marine litter (e.g. Ryan 1988a; Pichel et al. 2007), large numbers of net tows are required to adequately characterize the average abundance of litter at sea. Long-term changes in plastic meso-litter have been reported using surface net tows: in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in 1999, plastic abundance was 335 000 items km−2 and 5.1 kg km−2 (Moore, C. J. et al. 2001), roughly an order of magnitude greater than samples collected in the 1980s (Day et al. 1990a,b). Similar dramatic increases in plastic debris have been reported off Japan (Ogi et al. 1999). However, caution is needed in interpreting such findings, because of the problems of extreme spatial heterogeneity, and the need to compare samples from equivalent water masses. To date, most studies have sampled floating plastic debris, but some plastics are more dense than seawater, making it important to sample mid-water and bottom loads of plastic debris. Suspended debris can be sampled with bongo nets with a 0.33 mm mesh (Lattin et al. 2004). Few such surveys have been conducted, but data from the eastern North Pacific suggest that the abundance of suspended plastic within 10–30 m of the sea surface averages two orders of magnitude less than that of surface plastics (AMRF, unpublished data). All subsurface net tows should be deployed with a flowmeter to assess the volume of water sampled. The continuous plankton recorder (CPR) offers a valuable subsurface tool to track changes in the distribution and composition of micro-plastic particles at sea, both spatially and temporally (Thompson et al. 2004).(b) Litter on the seabedSurveys of macro-debris loads on the seabed have been conducted with divers (e.g. Donohue et al.2001; Nagelkerken et al. 2001), submersibles and remote-operated vehicles (Galgani et al. 2000) and trawl surveys (e.g. Galil et al. 1995; Galgani et al. 2000; Moore & Allen 2000; Lattin et al.2004; OSPAR Commission 2007b). Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, plastics dominate macro-debris on the sea floor to an extent similar to which they dominate floating litter and beach debris. Just like stranded debris, plastic on the seabed aggregates locally in response to local sources and bottom topography (Galgani et al. 2000; Moore & Allen 2000). The amount of plastic litter is so great in some areas with large amounts of shipping traffic that initiatives have been started to clean the seabed with trawls (OSPAR Commission 2007b), despite concerns about the ecological impacts of trawling. To date, most studies have measured standing stocks of macro-debris, but some accumulation data have been obtained following cleanups of shallow reefs in Hawaii (Boland & Donohue 2003; Dameron et al. 2007). The rate of litter accumulation on these reefs is correlated with initial standing stock and is a function of reef exposure and depth (Dameron et al. 2007). There has been little attention to the abundance of meso- and micro-debris on the seabed. Epibenthic trawls have found substantial plastic loads just above the seabed in shallow coastal waters off southern California (Lattin et al. 2004). Bottom sediments in deeper waters can be sampled with a Van Veen grab or similar device. Micro-plastics have been found in subtidal sediments around the UK and Singapore (Thompson et al. 2004; Ng & Obbard 2006).(c) Best practice for at-sea surveysEffective monitoring of floating plastics at-sea requires huge sample sizes to overcome the very large spatial heterogeneity in plastic litter. Stratified random sampling can help with this issue, but it requires a priori categorization of water masses into the relevant sampling strata. If resources are available, probably the best tool is to sample with neuston nets with a 0.33 mm mesh. Direct observations, often using vessels of opportunity, are less resource-intensive, but are fraught with potential biases linked to differences in litter detectability. Such surveys provide only a crude index of the abundance of floating litter. Much less is known about the distribution and abundance of mid-water plastics, but they probably suffer the same sampling problems, with the added complication of even lower abundances. The CPR is a useful tool for long-term subsurface monitoring of micro-particles.

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014Monitoring changes in benthic plastic litter is functionally similar to beach surveys, with the added complication of working underwater. Divers can replicate beach sampling protocols in shallow water, but in deeper waters there are greater issues with quantitatively robust sampling owing to variation in trawl and grab efficiency (linked to substratum type and other local conditions). Trawl nets also become clogged, reducing their efficiency and thus underestimating actual plastic abundance. Remote cameras may provide a more objective sampling strategy for benthic litter.

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XT: Method Solvency Encountering oceanic waste challenges our consumption habits

Susik 14 Abigail, Assistant Professor of Art History at Willamette University. “Convergence Zone: The Aesthetics and Politics of the Ocean in Contemporary Art and Photography,” Drain Magazine, http://drainmag.com/convergence-zone-the-aesthetics-and-politics-of-the-ocean-in-contemporary-art-and-photography/

Therefore a palpable trend has arisen which, along with communicating something about the predominance of the photographic mode in western cultural manifestations and the important ramifications of this shift itself in late twentieth-century art, also speaks profoundly to the fact that the ocean has once again emerged as paramount cultural indicator at large. Rather than revealing any nostalgic return to the formerly sublime associations of the ocean as a zone of both horror and pleasure, or a modernist understanding of the ocean as a self-reflexive matrix, I argue that new themes arise via this recent influx. The current resurgence of interest in the ocean among contemporary artists, primarily photographers, speaks to the heightened awareness of the ocean as a location which transparently reflects the total permeation of life, and art, with commercial languages. Attached to this is my claim that these works activate political consciousness about environmental issues related to human waste through a complex aesthetic operation involving confrontation with both the beautiful and the repulsive, the desirable and the repellent, thereby creating a kind of convergence zone or tidal vortex for some of our most powerful emotions about modern materiality and our interactions with it.Such a hybrid emotional cue is not unlike that of the Freudian uncanny, which plays upon the gap separating the familiar and the strange, the known and the forgotten, ultimately creating a heightened awareness of ‘being’ through this dichotomy. In the case of the contemporary ocean photographs, this dualistic viewing experience of repulsion and attraction alerts the viewer to the conflicted nature of their own feelings on this subject, thereby arousing a volatile if not always a proactively critical frustration with current affairs in our world. This kind of ‘unfolding’ or ‘awakening’ of political sentiment through the persuasive rhetoric of the artful image has underlying ties to propaganda, socialist realist art, and reportage. But as will be seen ahead, in the case of contemporary documentary photographs of the ocean, this ‘unfolding’ also establishes a unique breed of social response that is more about calling attention to a general malaise of ambiguity than spelling out any specific political message. It is this malaise of ambiguity itself, by which I mean the deeply conflicted feelings that western society harbors about ecological issues pertaining to the ocean, that arouses a subtle chain reaction of emotions. Such emotional inertia may lead to the political through the aesthetic in an indirect and gradual manner.Thus I argue that one effect of this new body of contemporary photography about the ocean is ultimately the reversal of the extremely common process of disavowal or repression that occurs in our daily lives regarding our consciousness of ecological issues. Obviously it is not as if culture at large suffers from some kind of collective amnesia about the increasingly polluted state of the world’s oceans. It is a frequent topic of conversation and a commonplace recognition for anyone coming into contact with the ocean on a given day. Nevertheless, such photographic ‘records’ of our world, act as stubborn witnesses and petulant reminders to the situation at hand, and therefore serve to disrupt the mundaneness of the already-known and offer a potential catalyst for social change.It is important to note that this rise in consciousness of the dominance of economic forces and their manifestation in art far exceeds early modernist preoccupations with the aesthetics of the industrial and the streamlined. While contemporary art about the ocean as an absolute cultural sphere demonstratively shares the same propensity for visual pleasure and beauty expressed in early twentieth-century renderings of the industrial, these new reflections on the ocean simultaneously embody a visceral shock and a subsequent disgust with the sheer magnitude of current material excess. In the act of looking at these contemporary images, the manifest formal beauty of the scenes and objects presented in the ocean context quickly gives way to a sharp psychological awareness of fear and culpability with regards to the potential natural disasters looming in the future as a result of our consumption patterns (more will be said on this developmental viewing process ahead). Assuredly then, it is precisely because the ocean was formerly a site for modernist transcendentalism of various kinds that today’s tendency toward unveiling the ocean as the communal sewer for capitalistic excess is all the more unsettling.This observation is underscored by the observation that the majority of contemporary art works which take the ocean as subject are either photographs or videos, thus allowing for an even more marked departure from the past legacy of painterly depictions of the oceanic sphere with all their symbolic baggage. Likewise, most of these contemporary works are grounded in a ‘documentary’ aesthetic in the sense that they record scenes from life with apparent objectivity and minimal image manipulation (although, as will become apparent ahead, Chris Jordan and Andy Hughes are the exception to this in my discussion). On the one hand, such a formal choice on the part of these artists might seem to signify a desire for the veracity and professed ‘factuality’ of reportage— and in some measure this impetus is sustained in the viewer reception of these images. The photographs that will be briefly discussed here by Allan Sekula, Edward Burtynsky, and Pam Longobardi (and certain examples by Jordan) maintain a realist edge in the sense that they faithfully record the surrounding visual field and also present scenes of notable social significance for speculation. Further, through their site specificity, made readily apparent through descriptive titles often including dates and/or place names, the viewer ‘learns’ something about the world and its environmental issues in the act of looking. In an aesthetic sense, this choice aligns these photographs with the substantial indexical and denotative tradition of photography. The landscape or object in view becomes the present and immanent ‘subject’ while the disembodied viewing eye observes from a self-aware, detached, and timeless distance. In a political sense, the reportage edge embedded in most of these photographs connects them on an obvious level to the journalistic functions of muckraking and social critique. In other words, the photographs expose a concealed truth and allow the ocean to be seen for what it currently is at least in part: a heterogeneous natural-cultural morass containing significant quantities of plastic and metal flotsam and jetsam.But as I have mentioned above, these contemporary photographic studies of the marine context should be distinguished from notable examples of social documentary photography by the likes of figures like Jacob Riis and Walker Evans because they linger even more emphatically in an ‘objective’ manner upon the aesthetic beauty of their subject matter (and I employ ‘objective’ here with awareness of the volatile relativity of this concept; hence ‘objective’ would read here more as ‘style’ than de facto ‘category’). This distinction no doubt has much to do with the lack of human subjects in the majority of these contemporary ocean scenes. In terms of genre, these works are closer to landscapes and still lives and so lend themselves more readily to formalized ordering and thus detached looking (at least upon initial glance). In many of these photographs, the intrusion of what we call ‘culture’ into the foreign realm of the category designated as ‘nature’ is confused in the most provocative of ways, which in turn complicates any ecological message that might be appended there in an interesting and productive manner. A photograph of shipping containers makes these objects seem almost as multitudinous in number as the ocean itself is vast (Fig.5). In another, a decommissioned ship is as impressive and poignant as the sight of a beached blue whale (Fig.6). A third photograph shows a knot of tangled netting strewn across shoreline rocks, colorful and intricate like a jellyfish or a bank

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014of living coral (Fig.9). At first, our comprehension delights in these novel similes which seem to show the artificial objects of culture as equivalent to or synonymous or even in harmony with nature itself. Soon thereafter, however, our ecological consciousness resuscitates and reminds us of the attendant disgust we associate with polluted environments, our collective fear of an apocalypse brought on by our own obdurate profligacy, our overwhelming guilt at playing a small part in this unraveling narrative of destruction, and finally our monumental political immobility in the face of these threats.In this regard, the contemporary photographs of the ocean that I speak of function to a degree like memento mori still lives, in the sense that we are aware on some level of the sober undertones of the scene even while we revel in the sensuous beauty of the presented images. Yet otherwise there are telling differences from the memento mori paradigm that center upon the differences between morality and ethics, religious ethos and politics—and these have much to do with basic differences in context and iconography. In the ocean images, the hubris and gluttony of humanity now extends beyond the realm of home and city, deep into the remote regions of the natural world itself where such forces become anonymous and divorced from individual moral liability. What were formerly objects of ephemeral enjoyment in pre-Enlightenment memento mori scenes have become nearly immortal plastic and metal anti-ruins both large and small in the ocean photographs. The message therefore is not that all our luxurious indulgences will pass away with the fleetingness of our own lives, as was the case with the memento mori, but rather that the fragmented remains of our banal purchasing patterns will long out live us in a horrifying, zombie-like fashion. Moreover, where memento mori scenes commented upon our collective desire to evade the awareness of inevitable death through hedonistic distraction, the contemporary ocean photographs articulate instead the notion that it is the very distraction itself, our stubbornly passive refusal to change our methods of production and consumption, which may accelerate our progress toward death as a species.However, to return to this question of the ramifications of this recent change in artistic depictions of the ocean, it is important I think to remember the diversity of oceanic imagery in the history of Western art in this discussion. It is not as if the ocean was previously a blank symbolic canvas in the human psyche. Indeed, one of the reasons for its centrality as a symbolic signifier for humanity throughout history has been its pliability, changeability, and general aptitude for multivalence. The ocean has been a favorite cipher for the development of Western modernity over the last few centuries, and the machinations of economics and power have long been imprinted there in text and image. In Europe, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maritime scenes most frequently depicted the ocean as an advantageous (if not always tamable) medium for commerce and military conquest. In contrast to this, however, during the nineteenth centurymany writers, artists, and photographers were drawn to vast marine reaches as a symbolic vehicle for various subjective and idealist states of mind. Arguably this preoccupation often overshadowed its frequent painterly depiction during the nineteenth century as an indicator of imperial expansion, industrial production and distribution, proletarian labor and bourgeois leisure.

CONTINUED One of the primary themes of twentieth-century art concerned the various structures of capitalism, and surely it was the first two stages of this cycle of commerce that received the most attention, from dada, to surrealism to pop and beyond: namely, industrial production and mass consumption. It is telling, however, that contemporary art of today instead resoundingly invests the most interest in the last stage of the production cycle, that of discard and waste. A significant amount of critical literature has emerged regarding this theme, and several critical terms such as informe, the abject and base, the outmoded, and others touch upon this constellation of meanings. Various twentieth-century mediums such as the readymade, the assemblage, the found object, the accumulation, etc., confront our culture of detritus head on.[6] In addition, an intermediary step in that cycle, namely the packaging and transportation of goods, also appears to be gaining in significance for artists in the last three decades. While the planet’s oceans are certainly also sites of production (oil, power, etc.) and consumption (seafood, tourism, leisure sports, etc.), contemporary artists have proven to be significantly drawn to contemplate oceans as sites of commercial dissemination and excess. In my mind, this is arguably a partial result of the former symbolic and formal associations of the ocean in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. While the deconstruction of ideology that postmodernism has achieved is undoubtedly a cause for celebration, the breakdown of mythologies linked to the ocean carries with it an invariably tragic ethical message. Whether we like it or not, the ocean is no longer a signifier of boundlessness and self-reflexive emptiness because, like everything else within our reach, we have made full-use of the ocean as just another ‘standing-reserve’ for the prowess of techne, to put it in Heideggarian terms.[7] Although oceans have arguably been a key site for anthropological exploits of all kinds throughout the evolution of humankind, the current state of total infiltration of the human and the oceanic, the near-complete acculturation of the ocean so to speak, has taken on unmatched, super- or sur- natural proportions. To bolster this point, I will address a selection of works that focus on the ocean’s role as a mega-highway for global capitalism, its role in the incessant transport of commodities. The American artist Allan Sekula and the Canadian Photographer Edward Burtynsky offer two prominent examples of a documentary concern with the shipping industry, wherein gargantuan cargo vessels become the international sentinels of the blue expanse, dramatically transforming global waterways and the many ports that shelter them. Between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s Sekula worked on a remarkable documentary project entitled Fish Story, which took form as large-format color photographs, a continuous slide show of still color photographs, an installation, a book with a long essay by Sekula, and a series of lectures.[8] Sekula continues to work on an extended version of the project and has made two documentary films in the last decade,Tsukiji and The Lottery of the Sea, and one film essay entitled The Forgotten Space (2010) with Noël Burch. One the one hand, for Sekula, Fish Story was a politically-motivated reportage project in which he studied firsthand the impact of maritime economics upon working classes and port towns across the globe. As part of the project, Sekula travelled internationally capturing photographs and video of ships, goods, sailors, ports and markets, even crossing the Atlantic in a cargo ship laden with containers. On the other hand, Fish Story had explicit art historical and sociological implications for Sekula in that he viewed the massive scale of the worldwide shipping industry to be indicative of a shift from a human understanding of the ocean as spatially panoramic, unable to be encompassed, to a view of the ocean as full of atomized details, securely enframed (Fig. 5). On a macrocosmic level, global shipping industries enframe and contain the vast reaches of the ocean through the constant mapping that occurs via crisscrossing routes between different national ports. These routes palpably impact the shifting waters around them, to the extent that the interrupt animal migration patterns and even whale sonar. On a microcosmic level, this containment is epitomized by the standardization of commercial exchange, from the multicolored hues of shipping container boxes to prefabricated product packaging. Oddly enough, this blunt formal awareness has a direct correlate in an ethical message, hence the distinctly composite nature of documentary-based photography related to the ocean today: aesthetic formality is often intermingled with implicit or explicit political critique, as I have already touched upon. Such technical means combined with pointed ideological ends have certainly been witnessed before in various developments of twentieth-century art beyond the propagandistic, as merely a straightforward mode of sound visual rhetoric that convincingly persuades the viewer. The novel approach of Sekula’s work, however, has more to do with the direct, one-to-one relationship of the formal and the political in the current capitalist culture of most of the world. What begins with an impression of the sheer sensorial and formal fascination of capitalist structures flips over in the next moment of reception to the stark awareness of the social and environmental ramifications of this economic system, hence producing a powerful kind of self-criticism and even paranoia in the viewer. Sekula therefore presents an ominous breed of beauty in his project, which quite stealthily inculpates the viewer as consumer. The sharp eye of the documentary camera effortlessly records the decorative nature of patterning that results from the systematized nature of commercial shipping. This formal play readily computes to the trained eye of the viewer as the language of art and the language of commercial design, creating an atmosphere of visual pleasure. That these means have once again fooled the viewer into reading beauty where disgust instead might lay upon second and third glance, drives home the psychological effect of the amalgam of formal and political all the more stringently. In related fashion to the reverse-tactic aesthetics of Sekula’s project, Edward Burtynksy’s large-format photographs of the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh made over the last decade also move into the political through the misleadingly beautiful. Images of mammoth ship skeletons stranded in bays emptied by low tide seem to comment that

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014the panoramic potency once embodied by the ocean has been replaced by the monumentality of commercial tankers and cargo vessels themselves (Fig. 6). Even here, at the end of their lives as objects or tools, these ships now seem to be the most foreboding creatures of the deep, and human scavengers come to strip off their siding like organisms picking the bones of beached carcasses. Thus echoing Sekula, Burtynsky’s studies of container ports also reiterate the point that astonishing vastness is no longer the prime territory of the ocean, but rather also that of human commerce, with its endless stockpiles of new and used goods. However, distribution of goods via the ocean is not the only issue currently taken up by contemporary photographers. There are likewise several contemporary artists turning a perspicacious eye toward the way in which the sea is altered in the final, inevitable stage in the capitalist production cycle: that of surplus and excess. These works follow in the footsteps of the site-specific paradigm demonstrated by Hans Haacke in a work from 1970 entitled Monument to Beach Pollution, a pile of beach rubbish reminiscent of the accumulations of Arman (Fig. 7). Notice however that Haacke’s pile contains mostly biodegradable items as opposed to plastic, indicating, again, the remarkable shift in production and distribution methods even in the last forty years. If once beaches were the organic parallel to the modern category of the found object, their sinuous latitudes inviting the meandering pastime of beachcombing for washed up natural treasures and the occasional manmade intrusion, today beaches have come disturbingly close to the intrinsically urban character of this surrealist activity. Where once artists picked over the detritus of capitalist circulation that flooded their own city neighborhoods, artists today reflect on the omnipresence of our excess as it can be seen on even the most remote beaches. Indeed, the waste that is so assiduously removed from our city streets now might be found in only a slightly degraded state on seashores across the globe or in convergence zones of tidal currents in the middle of the ocean.

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XT: Method Solvency New research is necessary to break down nature/culture and land/sea dichotomies

Tuddenham 10 David Berg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “Maritime Cultural Landscapes, Maritimity and Quasi Objects,” Journal of Maritime Archeology May 2010 Is/Vol 5

And it doesn’t stop with sociology. Maritime archaeology and its maritime landscapes can be viewed in the same sense, where the model applied to the landscape is not so much of a map of the archaeology in this landscape, as the working plan from which maritime archaeology or maritime cultural landscapes has been constructed. In the construction of maritime archaeology and its landscapes, an additional set of poles seems to be operating, a sorting where the dichotomy Land and Sea plays a similar role as the Nature—Culture dichotomy with the same mechanisms at play (Tuddenham 2008). Phenomena in between those extreme poles become quasi objects that get sorted to their proper place, a purification performed within a network, maintained by different institutions. I have already suggested this sorting in the introduction as a result of semantics, and named the sorting process between the poles Sea and Land as a maritimity. If one views the sorting process between those poles as an activity performed within a network , the process of identifying and sorting phenomena to the pole of Sea or Land is to be regarded as a production of quasi objects. It is simply a network constituted by heterogeneous elements, where phenomenon according to Latour get translated and sorted between the poles of Nature and Culture, and perhaps also, as I try to argue for, between Land and Sea. As for the construction of this maritimity, it will consist of a large range of heterogeneous elements, from chubby pink little divers to marine survey tools, saline and freshwater, wrecks and cannons, land and sea, gender, media, paragraphs, management and so on. Out of this heterogeneous soup, a maritimity appears; consisting of quasi objects that have been sorted out and translated in the network and then placed at its proper pole. In search of anything exclusively maritime, as Westerdahl points out is a challenging exercise, perhaps some of the challenges are not to be found in the phenomena itself, but within the network that performs the sorting of quasi objects toward the pole of sea. As a small case study to explore some aspects of maritimity as we can see it in maritime archaeology and in the study of maritime cultural landscapes, I want to take a closer look at Norwegian CHM in the managing of different cultural landscapes and their monuments, and to have a closer look upon an important repertoire in the maintenance of maritimity within Norwegian CHM. The Cultural Heritage Act defines what is to be regarded as a monument, and how to protect it. As we shall see, this is a sorting process, where phenomena get sorted and valued differently according to its identification as a monument belonging to the sea or land. My case study is to be found in a joint venture project between NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet and Møre & Romsdal County Administration, on an industrial monument at the Island Smøla. Its history goes back to one of the first recorded financial bubbles.

CONTINUED

Another example concerns important elements in the maritime cultural landscape, like moorings and navigation marks. These objects are highly maritime in their obvious connection to seafaring. They are not protected, however, even though a seamark or mooring from the seventeenth century may be far more exclusive than a wreck from the nineteenth century. In this sense, it can be said that present maritime archaeology has not played a decisive role within the network, to redefine what is to be regarded as a monument. To come to understand why this dissonance exists between maritime archaeology and CHM, one has to analyse the Management in the Making, instead of focusing on Ready Made Management. Shipwrecks and their belongings are given special attention in the legislation, and the article on ship finds was first articulated in 1963 as an addition to the legislation of 1951 (Trøim 1999:99). There are several obvious reasons why this article appears in the 1960s, but perhaps one important actant that seldom gets mentioned in the constitution of shipwreck as monuments and how to understand them in the present day CHM is sport divers and their technology. They have become hidden and silent, but in the post war period after the introduction of modern day diving equipment when the management policy was in the making, sport divers where not at all silent actants as Dumas so pertinently remarks. Later on, they have been translated, and then silenced. During early CHM under water, a lot of effort was made to interest and enrol sport divers in Norway. Today, sport divers have been marginalised within Norwegian CHM. The Norwegian situation is slightly different compared with e.g. the UK, where sports divers have remained a powerful voice over a longer period (personal communication J. Adams). Nevertheless they have been and still are important as actants in the network behind that which constitutes present day CHM. One might ask how the process toward a stabilisation of a network has influenced the perception of shipwrecks as monuments. The understanding of wrecks as monuments will according to ANT be a creation within a network, where heterogeneous actants play important roles. Perhaps those who have been silenced are the most interesting actants when it comes to this creation. As demonstrated, the legislation and the CHM organisation can provide a challenge in managing cultural landscapes under and above water as an entirety. It can be said that this example demonstrates a maritimity within Norwegian legislation and CHM, where the cultural heritage act operates as a repertoire to maintain a desired reality, where ships and their belongings are to be regarded as of different value compared to sites on shore. The maritimity within Norwegian CHM sorts and pushes phenomena toward the pole of sea. To investigate this black box within Norwegian CHM, one has to follow the creation of the legislation, where heterogeneous actants play a role in the establishment and maintenance of the network. Another question that could be asked in this case study is: what kind of cultural landscape does Smølen kobberverk belong to? It obviously belongs to both a maritime and a terrestrial landscape. But can they or should they be viewed separately? Which parts of the complex are to be defined as maritime or terrestrial? And who is to decide? Maritime-related archaeological data acquired through terrestrial archaeology by excavations on land are often studied by land-archaeologists who feel no need to refer to their problems as maritime or their field of research as maritime archaeology (Jasinski 1999:3). Jasinski‘s statement can be interpreted as a stabilisation of a network that aims to draw attention toward the pole of sea, where the sub-discipline Maritime Archaeology is the best suited to study maritime matters. Maritime archaeology is something else than terrestrial archaeology, which focuses on terrestrial matters. Archaeology according to this view simply consists of two poles with different agendas but with the same empirical base: That terrestrial and maritime archaeologist view, investigate and document cultural heritage objects on the coast from different perspectives is something I sometimes notice when studying photographs and drawings made by archaeologists. The same objects are often photographed or drawn by terrestrial archaeologists while standing on the shore with their backs to the sea, using the inland as the background for their documentation. Maritime archaeologists generally do the opposite. They take up a position with their backs to the land and use the sea as the background. This almost mechanical and often unconscious action reflects the way of thinking and the attitude of the researchers. Co-operation between these two categories of archaeologists would give the discipline a chance to acquire a more all-embracing understanding of the maritime cultural heritage (ibid:12). If so, the cooperation

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014between landlubbers and seadogs at Smølen Kobberverk should secure an all embracing understanding of both maritime and terrestrial aspects of this cultural complex and its landscape, where both poles meets and cooperate between physical and academic borders. Though, as Tim Ingold points out about landscapes; …it is important to note that no feature of the landscape is, of itself, a boundary. It can only become a boundary, or the indicator of a boundary, in relation to the activities of the people (or animals) for whom it is recognized or experienced as such (Ingold 1993: 156). The question is then; who identifies those boundaries and for what reason? Who decides what is to be identified as a phenomenon belonging to sea or land? Who in this network speaks on behalf of the rest and what kind of obligatory passage points can be identified? What kind of repertoires maintain the sorting process and production of quasi objects, which also can be termed as a maritimity?ConclusionMaritime archaeology and its maritime cultural landscapes clearly draw attention to the need for study of maritime matters. The concept of maritime cultural landscape illustrates the multitude of elements belonging to seafaring and the maritime way of life. But it also maintains a division that is created within a network, where the maritime cultural landscape becomes something different to other landscapes, as a result of a sorting process. In an Actor Network context, one can claim that it is as much a producer of quasi objects as a description of a reality to be found. When Westerdahl points out that the problem is to define the specifically maritime in relation to what is specifically land—oriented (2008:191), the answer to why this is challenging might be found in the network, as the result of a translation of quasi objects, or a maritimity as argued for in this paper. Poles like Sea and Land, or Maritime and Terrestrial, can according to ANT be viewed as creations within a network, as with the Nature—Culture dichotomy. In this article, I have discussed maritimity as an example of purification within the dichotomy Land—Sea, as equivalents to the modern metaphysics as described by Latour. In CHM and research this maritimity can represent a challenge, where the danger is as Westerdahl points out for those who have an interest in matters maritime (or pure terrestrial for that matter), becomes excessively narrow, even though the intention was exactly the opposite.

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XT: Method Solvency We need new non-linear methods of communicating waste management to policymakers

Shaxson 9 Louise, Delta Partnership, Central Hall Westminster. “Structuring policy problems for plastics, the environment and human health: reflections from the UK,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 27 July 2009 vol. 364 no. 1526

Science Departments must engage with diverse audiences … in ways tailored for each audience. This means paying greater attention to the changing contexts in which information is received and used, and consequently the mechanisms required to produce and transfer scientific information. For policy audiences in particular, the relevance of the science to the issues of the day, and the crucial importance of timing, underline the need for interactive knowledge brokering approaches that can deliver synergistic combinations of ‘science push’ and ‘policy pull’.What can we conclude for policymaking around plastics, the environment and human health? My conclusions all stem from the proposition that many plastics-related policies fall into the category of unstructured or badly structured problems. Individual components of a particular policy may be researchable (moderately structured) or relate to the implementation of best practice (well structured). However, policymakers need to reconcile the economic and social benefits plastics bring to society as well as their potential hazards to human and environmental health (Thompson et al.2009a,b). Doing this in a debate that is heavily value laden and ethically charged means that policy cannot rely on scientific research alone to provide unambiguous answers. Instead, plastics policymaking demands the pluralist, bargaining and incrementalist approaches applicable in the unstructured and badly structured domains and mentioned at the outset of this paper.My first conclusion is that policymaking around plastics demands a knowledge-brokering approach and that it is possible to change the way evidence teams operate within government to become more responsive to the needs of unstructured problems. Table 2 showed how different problem structures give rise to a diverse set of relationships between science and policy. The case studies build on this to illustrate the adage that form follows function: the structure of the brokering process must reflect the structure of the problem. A structured policy problem can be addressed by a relatively linear (though certainly two-way) flow of information, but an unstructured problem has multiple interfaces between multiple stakeholders. The teams in case study 2 have moved from being conventional research managers to devising new methods for scoping, assembling, procuring and interpreting evidence for SCP and Waste policy. However, implementing a knowledge-brokering approach within a government department requires organizational structures, knowledge management tools, governance and budgeting arrangements whose characteristics we are only just beginning to understand.

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XT: Bio-D Internal Link Ocean pollution destroys ecosystems—it has a long-run multiplier effect—five warrants

Craig and Hughes ‘12Robin Craig and Terry Hughes. 2012.. Dean for Environmental Programs at FSU College of Law. Researcher at James Cook University. “Marine Protected Areas, Marine Spatial Planning, and the Resilience of Marine Ecosystems”. Pages 4-6.

Offshore ocean dumping is now curtailed in the 80 or so countries that are parties to the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (the London Convention). Nevertheless, for decades nations and individuals intentionally dumped wastes at sea, included nuclear and toxic chemical waste, and this legacy pollution from the ocean dumping remains a concern for marine ecosystem health. As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) noted in 2005, for example, “the estimated 313,000 containers of low-intermediate emission radioactive waste dumped in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans since the 1970s pose a significant threat to deep-sea ecosystems should the containers leak, which seems likely over the long term” (MEA 2005: 483).Coastal development directly spurs marine pollution problems, such as by increasing theamount of polluted runoff reaching the oceans and by promoting the discharge of sewage into the sea. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), it would cost US$56 billion per year to adequately address discharges of untreated sewage from coastal communities, because “[a]round 60% of the wastewater discharged into the Caspian Sea is untreated, in Latin America and the Caribbean the figure is close to 80%, and in large parts of Africa and the Indo- Pacific the proportion is as high as 80-90%” (UNEP 2011). Certain kinds of land-based marine pollution, especially nutrient pollution from sewage, runoff of agricultural fertilizers, and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds, is also linked to the proliferation of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs)—the rapid reproduction and multiplication of small marine plants (phytoplankton and dinoflagellates) that then cause harmful effects on the environment. HABs, for example, can lead to “red tides,” the release of neurotoxins and the contamination of shellfish, and eutrophication and coastal “dead zones.”The various forms of marine pollution can, unquestionably, impair the resilience of marine ecosystems, especially coastal ecosystems. Sedimentation from muddy runoff can smother and kill marine organisms, particularly juveniles, leading to recruitment failure. Without recruitment, ecosystems lose their capacity to absorb and recover from recurrent shocks such as hurricanes , leading to regime-shifts and long-term degradation. Turbid waters also have lower light penetration, affecting light-dependent species such as kelp and corals. Added nutrients from terrestrial sources, in combination with depleted herbivores from overfishing, promote the establishment and growth of phytoplankton and macroalgae. Often the gradual buildup of pollution goes unnoticed as a threshold level is approached, leading eventually to a regime-shift to a new, degraded system that is difficult to reverse. Nevertheless, resolving those pollution problems is predominantly a terrestrial rather than a marine governance issue, requiring improved management of land-use practices, protective control of air emissions, water discharges, plastic and other waste disposal, and better management of polluted runoff.

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XT: Bio-D Impact Our biodiversity impact is linear—err on the side of caution with biodiversity loss

Sala and Knowlton 6 Enric and Nancy, Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. “Global Marine Biodiversity Trends,” Annual Review of Environmental Resources. First published as a Review in Advance in August of 2006.

Recovery of individual species may take longer than expected (117, 173) because of Allee effects, changes in trophic structure of the community (e.g., prey turned predators), difficult-to-reverse habitat changes, or a combination of several factors. Recovery of diversity at the community level will take much longer, probably longer than the generation time of the longest-lived species. In many cases, the reestablishment of native species, in particular trophic specialists, is contingent upon a facilitation process and the provision of minimum biogenic habitat require ments. Even species with high reproductive potential (e.g., the tropical sea urchin Diadema) have been notoriously slow to recover from catastrophic declines (174, 175), which can have delayed impacts on other ecosystem components with intrin sically slower recovery potential (e.g., corals). In general, recovery of biodiversity is unlikely to happen at global scales as long as the multiple anthropogenic drivers of change are chronic. Because our activities will likely increase in magnitude and extent in the future, we also should expect increasingly frequent collapses and ecosystem shifts. The globalization of human activities will undoubtedly result in more extinc tions, which by definition are irreversible. Some future extinctions may already be inevitable owing to changes that have already occurred [the so-called “extinction debt” (176)], although this provides only very general guidance as to what we might expect given the difficulty of estimating crucial parameters. The total number of species in marine ecosystems will probably remain un knowable . New molecular techniques developed during the human genome project could allow us to sequence metagenomes and obtain measures of diversity without having to identify and describe every single species (34). This bar code approach could provide a measure of species richness, including estimates of species loss as a function of gradients in human disturbance. However, there are limits in its abil ity to provide measures of ecological function. Although function can be assessed for microbes through an assessment of gene expression (metabolic function), ecological function in eukaryotes includes trophic and habitat-forming aspects that may not be predicted by a few genes. Without an understanding of function, it is difficult to know the ecosystem effects of species loss. Natural history and ecological studies to identify what types of species are strong interactors from a community perspective and to identify functional community subsets are hence a priority (171, 177). In addition, an effort to map marine ecosystems (178, 179) and ecoregions— similar to those conducted for terrestrial ecosystems— will be essential because conserving habitats to preserve species might be an immediate and practical management strategy, regardless of the number of species present. The relationships between biodiversity, productivity, and stability are often bidirectional, and changes in biodiversity can be both a cause and a consequence of changes in productivity and stability (180). There is strong evidence of erosion of ecosystem services associated to biodiversity declines, although there are still many unknowns, especially at the higher organizational levels and with regard to nonlinearities and feedback loops. Human population will grow to about 7.5 billion by 2020, with an associated coastal urbanization and migration to the coasts (181) and subsequent increased demand for marine ecosystem services. What will be the global footprint of the new topology of human society? What will be the impact of wealth on biodiver sity? The synergies between human drivers, the timing and location of thresholds, the trajectory and timescale of biological adaptation to climate change, and the resilience of marine biodiversity to human perturbations are all unknowns and probably unknowable in detail. We know with certainty that biodiversity at all levels will continue to decline locally and to be homogenized globally if human pressure keeps increasing. Eco logical theory suggests that the more intact a food web the more likely its recovery after a pulse disturbance. This is based on the fact that biodiversity accretes slowly over time in a locale, where production today is used for building structure and adding biodiversity tomorrow (182). The more production and the more functional components of the food web available, the more likely that a successional trajec tory will be reestablished (and hence biodiversity increased) after a disturbance. However, we still do not have an empirical test of this theory for marine com munities. The most successful examples of recovery are no-take marine reserves, which generally result in an increase in species richness and biomass of target species (183), but reserves tend to be small, and the recovery of community-wide biodiversity within their limits is not general [e.g., (130, 152)]. The direction and the magnitude of change are virtually unpredictable at present because humans are changing the rules of the successional game on a continuous basis. Species go extinct, exotic species are introduced, the physicochemical en vironment changes continuously, the physical structure of the habitat is altered, and we exert chronic extractive pressure on most trophic levels. All of this occurs at a timescale that is far shorter than the generation time of the largest organisms, which are typically strong interactors and often determine the diversity of entire communities. Merging biodiversity research with food web research may prove particularly productive in developing a science of biodiversity and resilience with practical implications (15, 180).

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Biodiversity loss threatens human extinction. Even the loss of obscure and niche species should be concerning.Raj 12 P. J. Sanjeeva Raj, former Head of Zoology Department, Madras Christian College, “Beware the Loss of Biodiversity,” The Hindu, September 23, 2012, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/beware-the-loss-of-biodiversity/article3927062.ece

Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety or richness of ecosystems, species composition therein, and their genetic diversity too. Professor Edward O. Wilson, Harvard visionary of biodiversity, observes that the current rate of biodiversity loss is perhaps the highest since the loss of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago during the Mesozoic era, when humans had not appeared. He regrets that if such indiscriminate annihilation of all biodiversity from the face of the earth happens for anthropogenic reasons, as has been seen now, it is sure to force humanity into an emotional shock and trauma of loneliness and helplessness on this planet. He believes that the current wave of biodiversity loss is sure to lead us into an age that may be appropriately called the “Eremozoic Era, the Age of Loneliness.” Loss of biodiversity is a much greater threat to human survival than even climate change. Both could act, synergistically too, to escalate human extinction faster. Biodiversity is so indispensable for human survival that the United Nations General Assembly has designated the decade 2011- 2020 as the ‘Biodiversity Decade’ with the chief objective of enabling humans to live peaceably or harmoniously with nature and its biodiversity. We should be happy that during October 1-19, 2012, XI Conference of Parties (CoP-11), a global mega event on biodiversity, is taking place in Hyderabad, when delegates from 193 party countries are expected to meet. They will review the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was originally introduced at the Earth Summit or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is the nodal agency for CoP-11. Today, India is one of the 17 mega-diverse (richest biodiversity) countries. Biodiversity provides all basic needs for our healthy survival — oxygen, food, medicines, fibre, fuel, energy, fertilizers, fodder and waste-disposal , etc. Fast vanishing honeybees, dragonflies, bats, frogs, house sparrows, filter (suspension)-feeder oysters and all keystone species are causing great economic loss as well as posing an imminent threat to human peace and survival. The three-fold biodiversity mission before us is to inventorise the existing biodiversity, conserve it, and, above all, equitably share the sustainable benefits out of it. Unique role Contrary to all such utilitarian objectives of biodiversity, the concept of ‘Deep Ecology’ believes in the intrinsic value of every living being, wherein all life is to be respected for its own sake, not for any of its monetary values. There is no living being that is so abject and absolutely useless for its ecosystem, even if we have not yet understood its utility. Every living being discharges its own unique ecosystem functions or services, and hence the loss of any single species destabilises the whole ecosystem. Keystone species render more obvious or even altruistic services to their ecosystems.

Loss of biodiversity hotspots causes human extinction

Mittermeier et al. 11Dr. Russell Alan Mittermeier, primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist, Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological Anthropology, with Will R. Turner, Frank W. Larsen,Thomas M. Brooks, and Claude Gascon (“Global Biodiversity Conservation: The Critical Role of Hotspots,” Abstract to Chapter 1 of the book Biodiversity Hotspots, Ed. F.E. Zachos & J.C. Habel, 2011, Available Online: http://www.academia.edu/1536096/Global_biodiversity_conservation_the_critical_role_of_hotspots

Global changes, from habitat loss and invasive species to anthropogenic climate change, have initiated the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth’s history. As species become threatened and vanish, so too do the broader ecosystems and myriad benefits to human well-being that depend upon biodiversity. Bringing an end to global biodiversity loss requires that limited available resources be guided to those regions that need it most. The biodiversity hotspots do this based on the conservation planning principles of irreplaceability and vulnerability. Here, we review the development of the hotspots over the past two decades and present an analysis of their biodiversity, updated to the current set of 35 regions. We then discuss past and future efforts needed to conserve them, sustaining their fundamental role both as the home of a substantial fraction of global biodiversity and as the ultimate source of many ecosystem services upon which humanity depends.

Loss of biodiversity causes extinction

Yule et al. ‘13School of Biological Sciences, Louisiana Tech University. Jeffrey V. Yule, â€œBiodiversity, Extinction, and Humanity’s Future: The Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Human Population and Resource Use, 3/21/13.

As a species, Homo sapiens sapiens has either already arrived or will shortly arrive at a fork in the road, and the route we choose will determine what sort of world our species will occupy. One road leads to a relatively biodiverse future in which a significant majority of today’s non-domestic species persist. The other leads to a future in which the majority of today’s non-domestic species are extinct . Along both courses, we suspect that global human population will likely

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014stabilize below the current estimated total of slightly above seven billion. Our species has already experienced and, to a considerable extent, contributed to a significant extinction event, so both prehistoric and historic human actions have already shaped global biology. At issue now is the extent and direction of ongoing human effects on global ecology and evolution, including the probability that our species will be a long-term or short-term component of global biological communities . In

speculating about humanity’s biological future, it is important to recognize that the details depend on how far into the future we opt to look. Ours is not an especially

old species. Depending on the criteria used to differentiate modern humans from our ancestors, we are either at least a 200,000 year-old species (based on anatomy) or a

50,000 year-old species (based on behavioral criteria) [1]. Assuming a future of roughly the same duration as our past, we will generally look less than 100,000-200,000

years into the future. While that amount of time is vast from a human cultural perspectiveâ€” and, indeed, from the ecological and evolutionary perspectives of

microorganismsâ€”from other perspectives, it is comparatively brief.

Largest risk of extinction—our evidence is comparative

Rahbek ‘12Professor of Biology, Ecology, and Evolution at the University of Coopenhagen Carsten, “The Biodiversity Crisis: Worse than Climate Change” /1/19/12; http://www.science.ku.dk/english/press/news/2012/biodiversity_rahbek/.

Mass extinctions of species have occurred five times previously in the history of the world â€“ last time was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs and many other species disappeared. Previous periods of mass extinction and ecosystem change

were driven by global changes in climate and in atmospheric chemistry, impacts by asteroids and volcanism. Now we are in the 6th mass extinction event, which is a result of a competition for resources between one species on the planet â€“ humans â€“ and all others. The process towards extinction is mainly caused by habitat degradation, whose effect on biodiversity is worsened by the ongoing human-induced climate change. "The biodiversity crisis â€“ i.e. the rapid loss of species and the rapid degradation of ecosystems â€“ is probably a greater threat than global climate change to the stability and prosperous future of mankind on Earth. There is a need for scientists, politicians and government authorities to closely collaborate if we are to

solve this crisis. This makes the need to establish IPBES very urgent, which may happen at a UN meeting in Panama City in April," says professor Carsten Rahbek,

Director for the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen.

Scientific consensus concludes aff—biodiversity loss is detrimental to ecosystems—our evidence is reverse causal

Cardinale and Naeem et al. ‘12Bradley Cardinale. School of Natural Resources and Enviro at U of Mich. Shahid Naeem. Dept of Ecol at Columbia. September 2012. “Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity”. Nature 486. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11148.html.

We conclude that the balance of evidence that has accrued over the last two decades justifies the following statements about how biodiversity loss has an impact on the functioning of ecosystems.Consensus statement oneThere is now unequivocal evidence that biodiversity loss reduces the efficiency by which ecological communities capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients.Meta-analyses published since 2005 have shown that, as a general rule, reductions in the number of genes, species and functional groups of organisms reduce the efficiency by which whole communities capture biologically essential resources (nutrients, water, light, prey), and convert those resources into biomass12, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 (Fig. 1). Recent meta-analyses further suggest that plant litter diversity enhances decomposition and recycling of elements after organisms die12, although the effects tend to be weaker than for other processes. Biodiversity effects seem to be remarkably consistent across different groups of organisms, among trophic levels and across the various ecosystems that have been studied12, 24, 25, 31. This consistency indicates that there are general underlying principles that dictate how the organization of communities influences the functioning of ecosystems. There are exceptions to this statement for some ecosystems and processes12, 32, 36, and these offer opportunities to explore the boundaries that constrain biodiversity effects.Consensus statement twoThere is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time.Numerous forms of ‘stability’ have been described, and there is no theoretical reason to believe that biodiversity should enhance all forms of stability37. But theory and data both support greater temporal stability of a community property like total biomass at higher levels of diversity. Five syntheses have summarized how diversity has an impact on variation of ecosystem functions through time38, 39, 40, 41, 42, and these have shown that total resource capture and biomass production are generally more stable in more diverse communities. The mechanisms by which diversity confers stability include over-yielding, statistical averaging and compensatory dynamics. Over-yielding enhances stability when mean biomass production increases with diversity more rapidly

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014than its standard deviation. Statistical averaging occurs when random variation in the population abundances of different species reduces the variability of aggregate ecosystem variables43. Compensatory dynamics are driven by competitive interactions and/or differential responses to environmental fluctuations among different life forms, both of which lead to asynchrony in their environmental responses18, 44. We have yet to quantify the relative importance of these mechanisms and the conditions under which they operate.Consensus statement threeThe impact of biodiversity on any single ecosystem process is nonlinear and saturating, such that change accelerates as biodiversity loss increases.The form of BEF relationships in most experimental studies indicates that initial losses of biodiversity in diverse ecosystems have relatively small impacts on ecosystem functions, but increasing losses lead to accelerating rates of change12, 25, 31(Fig. 1). We do not yet have quantitative estimates of the level of biodiversity at which change in ecosystem functions become significant for different processes or ecosystems, and this is an active area of research12, 31. Although our statement is an empirical generality, some researchers question whether saturating curves are an artefact of overly simplified experiments45. Saturation could be imposed by the spatial homogeneity, short timescales, or limited species pools of experiments that minimize opportunities for expression of niche differences. In support of this hypothesis, select case studies suggest that as experiments run longer, saturating curves become more monotonically increasing46. In addition, biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships in natural ecosystems sometimes differ from saturating curves22, and future research needs to assess when and why these differences occur.Consensus statement fourDiverse communities are more productive because they contain key species that have a large influence on productivity, and differences in functional traits among organisms increase total resource capture.Much of the historical controversy in BEF research involved the extent to which diversity effects are driven by single, highly productive species versus some form of ‘complementarity’ among species47, 48. Research and syntheses over the past 10 years have made it clear that both the identity and the diversity of organisms jointly control the functioning of ecosystems. Quantification of the variance explained by species identity versus diversity in >200 experiments found that, on average across many ecosystems, each contributes roughly 50% to the net biodiversity effect12. Complementarity may represent niche partitioning or positive species interactions48, but the extent to which these mechanisms broadly contribute to ecosystem functioning has yet to be confirmed12, 49.

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AT AT

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AT Biodegradable Biodegradable plastics are more dangerous—microparticles move up trophic levels in the food chain, decimating ecosystems

Burdokovska et al ‘12Valentina Burdokovska. With Heng Chen and Minodora David. 2012. “Possible Methods for Preventing Plastic Waste From Entering the Marine Environment”. Roskilde University. Pages 7-8.

There are many environmental problems related to the concentration of plastic waste in places such as the North Pacific Gyre.Large plastic debris can easily become an obstacle for marine animals which can get tangled up in it, whereas smaller parts are often mistaken by animals as food and get ingested.Even if plastic is labeled as ”biodegradable”, once it enters a water body the process of decomposition is slowed down. A reason for this is that objects which are made to be biodegradable can only be broken down by bacteria, or under controlled conditions, and oxidized into simple molecules (fx. methane, water and carbon dioxide) at certain temperatures (UNEP, 2011, #1). The temperatures found in the oceans are far lower than the ones on land. Besides temperature, intensity of UV radiation also plays an important role in the degradation process of certain plastics.Breakdown takes place while the plastic waste is at the surface of the water. Here it can be disintegrated into smaller pieces with the help of sunlight. Once degraded to smaller particles, the plastic still represents a risk of being taken up as food by local animals. There are known examples of sea turtles which confuse plastic bags for jellyfishes, or albatrosses which engulf small plastic objects to take back as food for their offspring (see Figure 2 and 3, left). As a result their stomachs become filled with unwanted objects and in the end, not being able to eat anymore, the birds die of starvation (see Figure 3, right). Microplastics - particles that are¶ smaller than 5mm in diameter – pose risk to zooplanktonic filter feeders, which can not control what they take up. As these small organisms are an important component of the diet of other marine animals, plastics continue their way up in the food chain, process known as biomagnification (an increase of concentration of harmful contaminants at each new step of the food chain).

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AT Oceans = Resilient Scientific consensus has shifted—ocean resilience is on the brink

Craig and Hughes ‘12Robin Craig and Terry Hughes. 2012.. Dean for Environmental Programs at FSU College of Law. Researcher at James Cook University. “Marine Protected Areas, Marine Spatial Planning, and the Resilience of Marine Ecosystems”. Pages 1-2.

At first blush, a concern for improving ocean resilience—or, more properly, the resilience of marine ecosystems—might seem misdirected. Oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and, because of their depth, provide 99 percent of the habitat available for life (Ogden 2001). Biological diversity in the oceans exceeds that on land (Craig 2005). In addition, the seas moderate and buffer the most fundamental physical and chemical processes of the planet, including temperature regulation, the hydrological cycle, and carbon sequestration. Changes in ocean temperature and ocean currents in one part of the world affect weather over a much greater area, as the La Niña/El Niña oscillation, or ENSO, demonstrates through its three-to-seven-year cycles, all driven by temperature and current changes in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. Barriers to dispersal are less prevalent in the sea than on land, promoting larval connectivity and migration over very large scales.The oceans, therefore, maintain world-spanning, interconnected physical, chemical and biological processes that seem far too large and complex for mere humans to damage. Indeed, in terms of both effective governance and scientific research, “marine systems have been relatively neglected because they are ‘out of sight, out of mind’ to most people, including most scientists”(Ray & Grassle 1991: 453). Until recently, a “paradigm of inexhaustibility” prevailed, a mindset that human managers did not need to worry about ocean health because marine ecosystems would always be resilient enough to absorb and recover from the multiple and interactive stresses—overfishing, pollution and now climate change—that humans impose on them (Craig 2005; Ogden 2001; Connor 1999).Unfortunately, we now know that marine ecosystems often cannot in fact absorb the multitude of anthropogenic stressors imposed upon them, even before the accelerating impacts of climate change become more severe and add to existing drivers of change such as overfishing (Agardy 2010; Laffoley et al. 2008). Many marine ecosystems have lost their resilience to recurrent natural and man-made disturbances, and have undergone long-term shifts to new, degraded regimes (Hughes et al. 2005). In coastal regions in particular, fishing has substantially altered marine ecosystems for centuries (Jackson et al. 2001). For example, many coral reefs have undergone regime-shift to macro-algae following the over-exploitation of herbivores and the addition of land-based nutrients. A study published in Science in 2008 concluded that no area of the world’s oceans is completed unaffected by human impacts, and 41 percent of the oceans are strongly affected by multiple human impacts (Halpern et al. 2008). In the face of additional climate change-induced stresses, marine governance systems and marine managers need to find mechanisms for increasing the resilience of ocean ecosystems. This chapter explores one set of those mechanisms—place-based marine management, especially marine protected areas (MPAs)—and the various legal regimes that encourage use of these tools in pursuit of increased marine ecosystem resilience.

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AT Ecosystems Resilient Ecosystems aren’t resilient

PSRAST ‘4 01/24/04, Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology, “Sudden collapse but Very Slow Recovery,” http://www.psrast.org/globecolcr.htm

After decades of gradual change by humans, many of the world's natural ecosystems - from coral reefs and tropical forests to northern lakes and forests - appear susceptible to sudden catastrophic ecological change, according to an international consortium of scientists." Models have predicted this, but only in recent years has enough evidence accumulated to tell us that resilience of many important ecosystems has become undermined to the point that even the slightest disturbance can make them collapse," says Marten Scheffer, an ecologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. A gradual awareness is building in the scientific community that stressed ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different, says Stephen Carpenter a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison." We realize that there is a common pattern we're seeing in ecosystems around the world," says Carpenter. "Gradual changes in vulnerability accumulate and eventually you get a shock to the system - a flood or a drought - and, boom, you're over into another regime. It becomes a self-sustaining collapse." The recognition that many of the world's ecosystems engage in a delicate balancing act has emerged as science has become more adept at assessing entire ecological systems and by a better understanding of how catastrophic ecological change has occurred in the past. For example, 6,000 years ago, swaths of what is now the Sahara Desert were wet, featuring lakes and swamps that teemed with crocodiles, hippos and fish." The lines of geologic evidence and evidence from computer models shows that it suddenly went from a pretty wet place to a pretty dry place," says Jonathan Foley, a UW-Madison climatologist. "Nature isn't linear. Sometimes you can push on a system and push on a system and, finally, you have the straw that breaks the camel's back." Most ecosystems, the authors write, face a steady diet of change, whether it be from increased nutrient levels or a ratcheting up of human exploitation. Moreover, anticipated changes in global climate are expected to add to what now seems to be a far more precarious situation than scientists had previously imagined." All of this is set up by the growing susceptibility of ecosystems," Carpenter says. "A shock that formerly would not have knocked a system into another state now has the potential to do so. In fact, it's pretty easy." Patterns of ecosystem degradation are evident on coral reefs and in forests. If large enough, forests can influence the weather, or even have their own weather systems by facilitating the movement of water from the surface of the earth to the atmosphere. Overexploitation of those forest resources, says Foley and Carpenter, can have profound effects beyond the simple extraction of a resource such as wood." The idea that nature can suddenly flip from one kind of condition to another is sobering," says Foley, who suggested that changes can be irreversible. Carpenter sees two management messages: "One, you can't see the change unless you have a view of the entire ecosystem over a long period of time and, two, there are slowly changing variables" that can lay a foundation for catastrophic change.

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AT Efficiency Pushes towards recycling and efficiency are insufficientGardner and Sampat 98 Gary, Senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute and Payal, staff researcher at Worldwatch Institute. Mind Over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives. Worldwatch Paper 144 Ed. Jane Peterson. pp 27-32 [rcm]

Despite the decline in materials intensity, however, total consumption of material swelled by 67 percent between 1970 and 1995. From an environmental perspective, this absolute level of materials use is the most relevant measure. Beetles and spider monkeys do not care if the trees logged from their forest habitat were pulped into millions instead of thousands of newspapers. From their perspective, the loss of habitat is not cushioned by the increase in materials efficiency. Indeed, decreases in materials intensity, while vitally important, are always insufficient if rising consumption offsets them and encourages continued logging of forests, opening of new mines, and pollution of air and water. In sum, when total materials use jumps—as it has by two thirds since 1970—it is clear that natural dematerialization is far too timid a tool for delivering the 90 percent reduction in total materials use being called for in industrial countries. Clearly, more deliberate action (discussed in the next section) are needed. Consider, for examples, the growing importance of the service sector in many economies. The “products” of the banking, insurance, health, education, and other non-extractive and non-manufacturing industries are less materials intensive than the hard goods emerging from mines, logging operations, and factories. This is why the expansion of service industries is expected to lower materials intensity. But the growing share of the economic pie claimed by service industries does not mean that manufacturing is in decline. The absolute size of the manufacturing sector continues to be substantial, and it continues to generate heavy flows of materials. Moreover, some services—banking, insurance, or retail, for example—often grease the wheels of firms that devour materials, making these industries instruments of intensive material use. Finally, service industries, while not heavy producers of materials can be voracious consumers. Infrastructure services like water, sanitation, transportation, and communications, for example, use huge quantities of materials. Thus, as Asian countries prepare to spend more than 10 trillion dollars on infrastructure over the next three decades, their economies could see a structural shift toward services. But without a conscious materials policy, this shift may not be matched by a reduction in materials use. Like the shift to a service economy, improvements in materials efficiency gains in recent decades did not dampen overall materials consumption. Technological advances slashed the amount of materials needed for a given use: carbon fibers and other new materials, for examples, support about 10 times as much weight today as the same quantity of metal did in 1800. But left to themselves, efficiency gains can often undo real resource savings. And technological complications have prevented efficiency gains from translating into materials reductions across the board. (See Table 6). Moreover, efficiency gains typically generate economic growth that spurs greater overall consumption of materials. Unless policies are in place to lock in efficiency gains, they can easily unravel under the influence of other technological or economic factors. Meanwhile, recycling, another contributor to declining materials intensity, has only barely been tapped. While global recycling of many metals generally increased in this century, and while recycling of municipal solid waste has humped rapidly in recent decades, recycling has never been a central feature of most economies. Indeed, recycling is still very much the exception for most materials: more than 73 percent of U.S. municipal solid waste was not recycled in 1995, for examples. The marginalization of recycling is the result of deep-seated technical and economic obstacles that can only [***Table 6 “Gains in Materials Efficiency of Selected Products and Factors That Undercut Gains” Removed***] be uprooted with a deliberate policy of dematerialization. Materials complexity, for example, often deters recycling because of the difficulty of separating materials into their pure, recyclable components. Plastics recycling is hampered by the need to segregate different plastics in order to preserve the desired properties of each. As a result, recycling, rates for plastic are typically the lowest of any material in the municipal solid waste stream. Similarly, products made from a mix of materials—form electronic devices containing plastic and metal, to envelopes with plastic windows—are expensive to recycle because of the work required to disassemble them. Such problems are surmountable, by designing products with recycling in mind, for example, or by taxing virgin materials to make the processing of scrap materials economically viable. But because absolute reduction in materials use was not a policy priority in the past three decades, creative options like these were not pursued. Recycling is also hampered when materials are dissipated during use because these materials are difficult to recover. While dissipated material account for only a small share of material flows through most economies, it is often hazardous material that threatens environmental and human health—chlorofluorocarbons, for example. Dissipated material is thus a high priority for recycling if it is recoverable. Alternatively, it may need to be eliminated entirely. Indeed, the impossibility of recycling dissipated lead, and the hazards associated with the material, prompted the United States to outlaw lead use in paint and gasoline in the 1970s, a move that was followed by a noticeable drop in the blood lead levels of the U.S. population. And banning dissipative use caused the recycling rate of other forms of lead to jump dramatically. The United States has nearly closed the loop on lead flows: it now recycles lead at a rate of 93-98 percent. But lead is the exception. Again, lack of policies to reduce absolute levels of materials use, especially the levels of dangerous materials, allows dissipative materials use to continue. At a broader level, markets for secondary materials are often plagued by the limited capacity of most economies to absorb them. Economies tooled to use virgin materials will naturally find the demand for secondary materials limited. In Canada, for example, taxes are shifted away from virgin materials producers and away from disposal—and shifted onto recyclers. Indeed, tax rates for recycled material are on average 27 percent compared to 24 percent for virgin material, resulting in a $367 million (Canadian) disadvantage to the recycling industry. Unless the structural biases against recycling are uprooted, expanding recycling programs simply worsens the glut of secondary material and depresses prices further. In short, recycling as currently structured focuses on materials that are easily collected, and easily stripped of foregin matter, and for which a market exists. As long as little effort is made to loosen these parameters, recycling will remain a marginal activity. Some analysts for examples, believe that recycling rates for municipal solid waste under current market conditions and regulations will bump into an upper limit of about 40 percent (compared to the 1995 rate of 27 percent for municipal garbage in the United States). In cases where higher rates have been achieved, credit is usually given to a changed setoff regulations or prices that begin to boost recycling. The institute for Local Self-Reliance in Washington, D.C., documents how modest changes in incentives helped 17 communities to achieve recycling rates ranging from 40 to 65 percent. Greater changes in incentives, applied even beyond urban waste to more substantial waste flows, have the potential to reduce wastes dramatically. In sum, major reductions in materials use were not achieved over the past several decades, mainly because there was no intent to do so. The shift to a service-dominated economy as driven by economic factors, not by a desire to reduce materials use. Increases in materials efficiency, especially lightweighting, were also propelled by economies, as well as consumer preferences. Recycling was motivated by a desire to reduce waste, and was largely limited in scope to “end-of-the-pipe” initiatives. And in any case, the inadvertent gains achieved were undone by ever-escalating levels of consumption. Even now, as materials efficiency is gaining greater attention, the vision of potential materials reduction is often inadequate. The OECD estimates, for examples, that under current market conditions and environmental policies—that is, without a transformation of the materials system—firms in industrial nations can make profitable reductions in

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Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014materials (and energy) use of 10 to 40 percent. They cite a study of 150 businesses in Poland, for example, showing that waste could be reduced by 30 percent just form equipment modernization. Such reductions are worth of encouragement, but they fall short of the material cuts of 90 percent that are increasingly advocated. Indeed, the 10-40 percent potential reductions identified by the OECD may be farther from the ambitious reduction goals than the math implies, since early efficiency gains are typically far easier to achieve then later ones. Only changes to materials-consuming systems can complete the materials reduction job.

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AT Land Solutions Key We don’t even know if most plastic comes from land—more surveys are key

Gold et al. 2014Mark Gold. Associate Director of the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability. 2014. “Plastic Pollution: Stemming the Tide of Plastic Marine Litter: A Global Action Agenda”. Tulane Environmental Law Journal. Pages 169-170.

In recent years, global concern about ocean health has keyed in on the growing problem of plastic marine litter. There is a lot we do not know about plastic marine litter; for instance, there is no hard data on exactly how much plastic is in the marine environment. It has been estimated that 20 million tons of plastic marine litter enter the ocean each year. n6 We do know that, at some locations, the majority of all observed marine litter tends to be plastic items. n7 For instance, one beach litter monitoring pilot project found plastics to comprise an average of 75% of all beach litter on reference beaches in eight Northeast Atlantic countries. n8 Temporal trends also remain unclear; however, because plastics production increases by almost 5% annually, n9 and because most plastics do not biodegrade in marine environments, n10 it is likely that the concentration of plastics in the ocean has been increasing and will continue to increase over time.Furthermore, it is not clear what proportion of plastic marine litter originates from land-based versus ocean-based sources. Some estimates suggest that 60% to 80% of plastic marine litter derives from land-based sources n11 such as waste sites, litter, untreated sewage and stormwater [*170] outfalls, poorly managed industrial and manufacturing sites, and tourist activities. Land-based plastic litter commonly found in the marine environment includes everything from single-use packaging to industrial "nurdles" (preproduction pellets). Ocean-based sources such as ships, oil and gas platforms, and aquaculture facilities n12 account for plastic marine litter items such as fishing nets, floats, traps, pots, lines, and other aquaculture components. n13 Ocean-based litter also includes lost cargo containers. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of shipping containers and their contents, including plastics, are lost at sea each year due to accidents, storms, or poor management practices. n14 Notably, ships are not required to report or clean up lost cargo unless the contents are hazardous.

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AT Plastic Decomposition Decomposing plastic is worse for the environment—surveys are key

Discovery News ‘14Discovery News. AFP press release. June 19 2014. “Plastic-Eating Microbes Help Marine Debris Sink”. http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/plastic-eating-microbes-help-marine-debris-sink-140619.htm.

Reisser said the research showed diatoms -- tiny algae that were the most commonly found microbe living on the microplastics -- were using the little pieces as a "boat" to move around on the surface of the ocean.As more and more diatoms -- which are made of silica -- gathered on a plastic piece, they appeared to make it sink to the bottom of the ocean floor, she said.The actions of the microbes could explain why the amount of plastic floating on the seas has not been expanding as fast as scientists expected, Reisser added.But the researchers also found evidence of possible tiny bite marks on the microplastics, raising concerns that other small organisms could be consuming toxins found in the litter."It seems we have tiny animals grazing on these plastic inhabitants -- but we are not sure if this is good or bad," Reisser said."That's a hazard that we are very worried about, but we need far more research to see how big this problem is."

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AT Biodiversity Internal Link Turn

Invasive species that commute on marine debris are net worse for biodiversity

Bax ‘3 Nicholas Bax and Angela Williamson both researchers for CSIRO and Centre for Research on Introduced Marine Press. Max Aguero and Exexequiel Gonzalesz are both researchers for InterAmerican Centre for Sustainable Ecosystems Development, Chile. Warren Geeves, of Environment Australia. “Marine invasive alien species: a threat to global biodiversity,” Marine Policy 27. 2003.

Marine environmental stressors are often cumulative and the stress of invasive marine species is no different. While it has as yet not been possible to establish the primary mechanisms that lead to new invasive species becoming established, except for the level of inoculation, it seems most likely that factors that modify or create new habitat facilitate invasion. Increased population, trade and tourism in coastal regions has resulted in an increasing number of novel man-made habitats—e.g. piers, breakwaters, seawalls, eutrophied and polluted areas, docks and marinas, boat hulls and ballast tanks— that often support assemblages that are distinct from neighbouring communities [30]. When novel physical habitats are developed in areas subject to a high influx of alien organisms, such as international ports, the combination increases opportunities for alien species establishment. It is not just the presence of novel physical structures but also the changed physical and biological environments that surround these structures and provide habitat to which local communities have not adapted over evolutionary time. For example the 1999 black striped mussel invasion in Darwin occurred in artificial marinas, closed off from local tidal exchange, subject to periodic freshwater inflows (that kills off the invertebrate fauna) and with a recent history of sewage pollution [19]. The other areas in Southeast Asia, where the mussel is invasive are primarily environmentally disturbed inner harbour areas. Similarly toxic algal blooms often occur in response to environmental pollution, but their frequency and ubiquity have been enhanced by the distribution of algal species around the world. For example, dated core samples indicate the dinoflagellate Gymnodinium catenatum (one of the causative organisms of paralytic shellfish poisoning) appeared in Australian waters after 1972 [31]. Once an invasive alien species enters the local marine environment, it is most likely there forever. It will interact with existing communities and, in the process modify native habitats. Many invasive species can be considered system engineers—that is, rather than just blend in to their new environment, they will change it. This can occur through increasing the predation pressure on native organisms (e.g. the North Pacific seastar in Australia; the European shore crab in North America, Australia and South Africa; the comb jelly in the Black and Asov seas) or modifying the habitat by smothering (e.g. Caulerpa taxifolia in the Mediterranean and California; black striped mussel in Southeast Asia and Australia), or providing new structural habitat (Japanese seaweeds in Europe, South Africa and Australia; the New Zealand screwshell in Australia). Many of these invasive species work synergistically—the environmental modifications caused by one species provide increased opportunities for further alien species to invade. This escalating problem has been termed ‘‘invasional meltdown’’ [32]. The far-reaching impacts of invasive species have the potential to impact most marine conservation programs and they need to be considered as part of the planning for those programs. The conservation value of marine protected areas, for example, will be highly compromised by alien species invading, modifying the habitat and driving out native species. Caulerpa taxifolia now encroaches on many marine reserves in the Mediterranean, smothering existing habitat and replacing native seagrasses, reducing the reserve’s conservation value [10,27]. In Tasmania (Australia) the bizarre situation has been reached where an invasive marine macroalga (Undaria pinnatifida) is protected where it occurs in marine reserves, because these are no-take zones. This raises the question of what are the conservation goals for these marine protected areas, and the inadequacy of marine reserves that are not part of a broader conservation strategy including minimizing the risk of introducing and spreading invasive alien marine species [33]. The role of invasive species in structurally altering habitat, compromises the value of habitat conservation programs. While the impacts of fishing on benthic habitat are well documented [34] and increasingly the focus of environmental management, little is known and no one is considering managing an invasive marine gastropod from New Zealand—the New Zealand screwshell, Maoricolpus roseus—that smothers the bottom out to 80m depth and changes the seabed from one of fine sand to a dense cover of live and dead shells [35]. A systematic approach is needed to first determine the diversity and scale of manageable threats to the marine environment before embarking on single-issue management [36].

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AT Boulter Boulter concludes aff

Boulter ‘2Michael Boulter (professor of paleobiology at the University of East London) 2002 Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man, p. 170

The same trend of long-drawn-out survival of the final relicts has been further considered by Bob Mayâ€™s group at Oxford, particularly Sean Nee. The Oxford group are vociferous wailers of gloom and doom: â€˜Extinction episodes, such as the anthropogenic one currently under way, result in a pruned tree of life.â€™ But they go on to argue that the vast majority of groups survive this pruning, so that evolution goes on, albeit along a different path if the environment is changed. Indeed, the fossil record has taught us to expect a vigorous evolutionary response when the ecosystem changes significantly. This kind of research is more evidence to support the idea that evolution thrives on culling. The planet did really well from the Big Five mass-extinction events. The victimsâ€™ demise enabled new environments to develop and more diversification took place in other groups of animals and plants. Nature was the richer for it. In just the same way the planet can take advantage from the abuse we are giving it. The harder the abuse, the greater the change to the environment. But it also follows that it brings forward the extinctions of a whole selection of vulnerable organisms. If humans were to fall into this vulnerable category, we too would become extinct.

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AT Topicality

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2AC Topicality—Exploration is Discovery

1. We meet their interpretation—debris monitoring is intended to discover the extent of marine artifactsPresident’s Panel on Ocean Exploration 2000 Chair Dr. Marcia McNutt, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. October 10, 2000. Discovering Earth’s Final Frontier: A U.S. Strategy for Ocean Exploration. http://explore.noaa.gov/sites/OER/Documents/about-oer/program-review/presidents-panel-on-ocean-exploration-report.pdf

More than all the world’s museums combined, the ocean holds the artifacts that document [hu]mankind’s historical relationship with the ocean. The Panel recommends that any new program in ocean characterization document and reference historical shipwrecks, submerged villages, and sites of archaeological significance. While the history of ships that sunk while transporting silver and gold is recorded with some accuracy, hundreds of ships that brought slaves to this country also sunk, leaving little or no trace for historians to follow. A further goal for the Ocean Exploration Program should be to largely complete the mapping of the U.S. continental shelf. Maps that interpret the seafloor provide a fundamental framework for research and management of the world ocean and are a prerequisite for identification of regions that warrant protection. They show composition of the seabed, its shape (topography), areas of anthropogenic impact, and areas of historical and cultural interest. They provide information on the transport of sediment and help to define biological habitats. All this information can be used to develop predictive models to guide habitat and resource management, monitoring strategies, and other research / exploration goals. Obviously, all marine life, ecosystems, archaeological sites, and seafloor features cannot be mapped and inventoried immediately. A strategic hierarchical approach to mapping must be considered, perhaps beginning with larger, more obvious species, features and sites on a large geographic scale, and working toward the finer resolution of the identification of biodiversity within the marine system.Although the production of high-resolution base maps is the first step in a systemic strategy, it is a daunting task, considering how little of the seafloor has been mapped. For example, less than five percent of the total U.S. EEZ has been mapped in high-resolution. While the United States has always taken great pride in being a world leader in the development of approaches to the understanding and stewardship of the oceans, we now find that other nation are far ahead of us. England, Canada, and Australia are well along in developing plans for the complete mapping of their EEZs, and New Zealand and Ireland have already begun multi-year, multi-million-dollar programs to be systematically explore their EEZs. It is critical that the United States also begins this important task immediately. A minimum level of exploration would help identify areas of unique value and global importance. The results of these exploration efforts should be sufficient to guide future exploration and action items for resource managers. Systematic preliminary site surveys should be conducted in advance of more focused expeditions to discover new environments inhabited by presently unknown organisms. Information form satellites should also be used to provide maps of surface water characteristics need to plan exploration of the EEZ.

2. Counter interpretation—Ocean exploration includes surveying the archaeological, physical, and biological aspects of the oceanNOAA 5 S.B. Rutz, NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center and D.W. Collins, NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center. “An Ocean Data Archivist’s Perspective During an Ocean Exploration Cruise. http://research.noaa.gov/Home/SiteNav.aspx

***OE is the Ocean Exploration Office of the National Oceanographic Data Center***

The mission of OE is to sponsor science-based exploration of the world oceans and to engage the public in the wonders of scientific discovery. Four primary components comprise the OE mission [1]: • Mapping the physical, biological, chemical, and archaeological aspects of the ocean. • Understanding ocean dynamics at new levels to describe the complex interactions of the living ocean. • Developing new sensors and systems to regain U.S. leadership in ocean technology. • Reaching out to the public to communicate how and why unlocking the secrets of the ocean is well worth the commitment of time and resources, and to benefit current and future generations

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3. The difference in surveying and monitoring is not their frequency, but where they occur—surveys typically refer to beach surveys our specification of marine debris excludes thatRyan et al 2009 Peter G. Ryan, Percy FitzPatrick Institute, DST/NRF Centre of Excellence , Charles J. Moore, Algalita Marine Research Foundation, 148 N. Marina Drive, Long Beach, CA 90803 , USA Jan A. van Franeker, Wageningen IMARES and Coleen L. Moloney, Zoology Department and Marine Research Institute, University of Cape Town. “Monitoring the abundance of plastic debris in the marine environment,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science.

Plastic debris has significant environmental and economic impacts in marine systems. Monitoring is crucial to assess the efficacy of measures implemented to reduce the abundance of plastic debris, but it is complicated by large spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the amounts of plastic debris and by our limited understanding of the pathways followed by plastic debris and its long-term fate. To date, most monitoring has focused on beach surveys of stranded plastics and other litter. Infrequent surveys of the standing stock of litter on beaches provide crude estimates of debris types and abundance, but are biased by differential removal of litter items by beachcombing, cleanups and beach dynamics. Monitoring the accumulation of stranded debris provides an index of debris trends in adjacent waters, but is costly to undertake. At-sea sampling requires large sample sizes for statistical power to detect changes in abundance, given the high spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Another approach is to monitor the impacts of plastics. Seabirds and other marine organisms that accumulate plastics in their stomachs offer a cost-effective way to monitor the abundance and composition of small plastic litter. Changes in entanglement rates are harder to interpret, as they are sensitive to changes in population sizes of affected species. Monitoring waste disposal on ships and plastic debris levels in rivers and storm-water runoff is useful because it identifies the main sources of plastic debris entering the sea and can direct mitigation efforts. Different monitoring approaches are required to answer different questions, but attempts should be made to standardize approaches internationally.

4. Standards

A. Over-limiting—defining exploration solely as discovery excludes exploration for resources, observation programs for drilling, climate change, marine ecosystem trends, and more through geographic mapping of areas that have already been “discovered.”

B. Ground—defining exploration as discovery makes all exploration solvency speculative, ruining concrete advantages about what is found in exploration and forces advantages to be based on perception, losing valuable DA and advantage ground.

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AT Framework

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2AC Framework

1. We meet: the plan is a statement of the desirability of plan implementation by the United States federal government.

2. Counter interpretation: The OED defines Resolved as:[OED “Resolved] “trans. a. (a) To reduce (a subject, statement, phenomenon, etc.) by analysis into more elementary forms , principles, etc.; to consider or demonstrate (something) to be divisible or analysable into.”

3. We are not extra-topical—public policy must include a discussion of the values policies embody Weible 7 Chirstopher M., Georgia Institute of Technology, “An Advocacy Coalition Framework Approach to Stakeholder Analysis: Understanding the Political Context of California Marine Protected Area Policy,” J Public Adm Res Theory (2007)17 (1): 95-117.

There is a growing recognition that public policy controversies are driven more by value differences than by technical deficiencies. Unfortunately, we have yet to develop, test, and refine systematic approaches for understanding political systems. In this article I explain how the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) can be used as a theoretical basis for understanding political context via a stakeholder analysis. An ACF stakeholder analysis widens the attention of policy analysts toward subsystem-wide dynamics with multiple actors who are motivated by their beliefs, structure their relationships into advocacy coalitions, and try to influence policy through utilizing multiple resources and venues. I illustrate an ACF approach to stakeholder analysis in a scientifically contentious political conflict over the establishment of marine protected areas in California. I conclude with a summary of contributions to the ACF literature and the strengths and limitations of conducting an ACF stakeholder analysis.The Death of Environmentalism (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004) criticized the environmental movement for defining the underlying causes of environmental problems as technical deficiencies rather than value conflicts. While Shellenberger and Nordhaus's criticism shocked the environmental community, they were not the first to argue that environmental or policy conflicts were driven more by differences in values than analytical shortcomings in technology and science (Dror 1967; Fiorino 1990; Jenkins-Smith 1990; Kingdon 1994; Mazur 1981; Meltsner 1972; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999). Mazur (1981, 41) probably said it best: “Many technical controversies are primarily disputes over political goals and only secondarily concerned with the veracity of scientific issues which are related to these goals.”For policy analysts dealing with analytically intractable policy issues, one implication from this observation is to focus not only on conducting a high-quality, technical analysis (such as a benefit-cost analysis) but also on developing a good understanding of the political context of the problem. Most policy analysis textbooks agree that understanding political systems is an important step in recommending alternatives (Patton and Sawicki 1993;Weimer and Vining 2005). Unfortunately, there has been relatively little effort devoted to developing a theoretical framework to guide policy analysts in understanding policy disputes. The goal of this article is twofold: (1) to explain how the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) can be used as a theoretical basis for understanding policy disputes via a stakeholder analysis and (2) to demonstrate an ACF approach to stakeholder analysis with a case study of marine protected area (MPA) policy in California.

4. Ground: Defending value claims associated with the 1ac increases negative critique and counter-advocacy ground.

5. Debating the value and affective register of our affirmative is more predictable and worthwhile than its technical aspects.Leschine 88 Thomas M., Institute for Marine Studies, University of Washington. “Ocean Waste Disposal Management as a Problem,” Ocean & Shoreline Management Vol 11

In this paper the problem of implementing water quality-based pollution management strategies as a problem in decision-making is considered. Particular attention is focused on the assimilative capacity- based ocean waste management strategy proposed recently by GESAMP and a similar comprehensive waste management decision- making framework developed by the Keystone Ocean Project (KOP). First the literature on policy analysis and organizational and individual behavior in the face of uncertainty is used to identify a number of difficulties which comprehensive and rational decision-making strategies like those proposed could be expected to encounter in implementation. Then, referring to studies of sludge management decision-making in the New York Bight (conducted by the author with a number of colleagues over the past several years), ways in which policy analysis might aid waste management decision-making are identified. It is argued that analysis based on rational-comprehensive models of decision-maker behavior is unlikely to find much relevance in the world of ocean waste management decision-making, but that the conceptual underpinnings of the emerging field of 'decision support' are highly relevant to the problems pollution managers face. Examples from previous research illustrate ways in which decision makers can be assisted in clarifying goals and in understanding the implications of the tradeoffs

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http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/content/17/1/95.full#ref-60













Starter Pack – Maritime Rubbish Aff UTNIF 2014among objectives implied by policy selection. Ways in which information on the views of advocacy groups and decision makers can be used to aid negotiations aimed at identifying acceptable waste management strategies are also described.

CONTINUEDThe definition and utilization of appropriate goals for waste management decision-making, properly acknowledged to lie within the prov- ince of socioeconomic evaluation, nevertheless engenders its own set of problematic consequences. Consent about goals may of course prove elusive, and many goals may remain poorly defined. But acceptance by decision-makers of the notion that policy selection is to be guided by rational, comprehensive, goal-centered analysis may be tantamount to accepting the notion that the policy ultimately selected will bear little resemblance to the policy presently in force. Unfortunately, as Lind- blom has pointed out, decision-makers choose decision strategies which are much more cautious in their orientation--'remedial, serial, and exploratory'--with limited comparisons of options much preferred to comprehensive evaluations. 12 As a result, new policies most frequently emerge as relatively modest variations on old policy themes. As Hennessey and Robadue note, the analyses and evaluations carried out by decision-making organizations are more likely to be fragmented and dispersed throughout the organization than they are to be comprehensive and centrally directed.iZ Individual goal statements may also prove difficult to stabilize in ways that lend themselves to goal-directed problem-solving strategies. Hen- nessey and Robadue cite the work of Cobb and Elder on the agenda-setting process in noting that water quality objectives can undergo a peculiar metamorphosis as the attention of decision-makers is directed toward the problems they represent. ~3 Issues will receive more attention if they expand and generalize in ways that make them cogent to most people. But as this happens, the original point of raising the issue may grow so ambiguous as to be only partially addressed by the remedies ultimately selected. The problem of cleaning up the polluted waters of Narragansett Bay seemed to demand a variety of controls if shellfish contamination problems were to be remedied. But the issue which commanded public support directed attention at modernizing a failing sewage treatment plant instead. 13 What might be termed 'target' objectives, the essential ingredients of water quality objectives-oriented management regimes, are transformed into 'instrumental' objectives, and water quality-based decision-making begins to sound like the effluent standards approach.

6. Perm: both frameworks are compatible with one another. This solves their offense—allowing for policy education with affective resonance.

7. Extend our Hawkins and Gregson evidence—environmental policy inevitably has an affective resonance its only a question of our policy frame waste—as inert matter for governmental management allow it to be hidden at the bottom of the ocean or as an active factor in our political landscape that demands to be accounted for.

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Framework—AT: Decision Making

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We need waste policy that deals with uncertainty—pre-rec to any good policyLeschine 88 Thomas M., Institute for Marine Studies, University of Washington. “Ocean Waste Disposal Management as a Problem,” Ocean & Shoreline Management Vol 11

The results above suggest that an assimilative capacity-based waste management strategy aimed at comprehensive problem-solving is likely to suffer in contentious situations characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. A more interventionist implementation of the assimilative capacity-based strategies may be needed than their proponents have suggested. Faced with a small number of ready-made alternatives with widely varying distributional consequences, even an informed policy- broker is unlikely to achieve the kind of balancing of objectives desired if he or she chooses to operate in a passive mode. The 'neutral intervenor' model of the environmental mediation literature has appeal for policy disputes like the New York Bight dumpsite selection problem. 29 Such intervention can take many forms. Those approaches which emphasize the content of the dispute and its settlement tend to stress the creation and exploration of new policy options, and the development of mitigation, compensation and risk- sharing schemes as contingencies depending on the outcomes of whatever policy is adopted. 3° Such approaches are more likely to balance the risks and costs of waste disposal than those which force a choice among fixed alternatives. When uncertainty is high, the errors will likely fall on the side of conservatism on behalf of the resources controlled by the politically most potent constituencies. Were policy-brokering to take the form of a mediation conducted by a neutral third party, the information developed from descriptive decision analysis could assist the mediator in a number of ways. An examination of the results of the analysis might lead the mediator to identify a number of potential strategies by which to reduce the initial set of alternatives. 24 Comparisons of evaluations across negotiating parties might similarly reveal the potential for coalition formation among parties at an early stage. Because techniques like linear discriminant analysis highlight those component evaluations which are most similar within groups of like-minded individuals but most consistently different across them, they could have utility in identifying the main sources of conflict within the group as a whole. Such analysis might also help identify compensation/mitigation offers which might increase the acceptability of some waste management options. 2s Reasoning that a compensation/mitigation offer designed to increase the acceptability of an option might be most acceptable to an interest group in an area where high weight was placed on the criterion but low marks were given to the expected performance of the options, the ratios of weights-to-ratings for the groups of individuals whose ratings appear in the 'unacceptable' column in Table 2 were formed. The highest such ratio proved to be associated with the 'economics' dimension for the 106-mile site. In a mediatory framework therefore, efforts might profitably be placed in trying to find ways to compensate/mitigate the high costs associated with use of the 106-mile site, including the possibility of using the 60-mile site instead. Exploring the domain of feasible policies: a modeling approach It has been suggested above that analysis best aids the process of developing policies which can be successfully implemented by focusing on the differences between contending policies rather than on the search for the 'best' policy. If policy variables reflective of the goals decision-makers and their constituencies have for resolving the problem at hand can be identified, then analysis can illuminate the tradeoffs among goals inherent in choices among policy options.

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