Nobody likes to see plastic in the ocean, and even worse, those YouTube videos of turtles

or albatross injured by plastic debris.

It makes us all want to jump up and do something.

So today, we're going to go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, plus

the academic literature, to find out once and for all, what is the true scope of the

problem, the true cause, and see if anything can be done about it.

Ocean plastics are coming right up on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Ocean plastics, facts, and falsehoods.

Few topics arouse as much emotion as that of plastic waste in our planet's oceans.

This comes from familiar images of mangled sea life.

Turtles with shells misshapen by six pack rings, and albatross skeleton bursting with plastic

bottle caps.

Pop media shows film of waterways choked with floating plastics.

Culture responds, with Silicon Valley funded efforts to clean up the oceans with novel

machines.

Activists push through legislation to ban plastic bags and straws.

To at all, science agencies have provided a steady stream of research and data, quantifying

the size and scope of the problem.

Today, we're going to lay out as much of this as we can to see how well the existing cultural

response is matched to what the data tell us, and also see whether there might be other

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