> The cleanup installation showed promising results, but most researchers agree efforts should also be put toward preventing plastic from entering the ocean in the first place.

The Ocean Cleanup are also researching that with their 'Interceptors'.

https://youtu.be/bm1rH70wfJo

The scale of this depresses me. They removed 10 tons in this test, but we add 12 million tons… A year…

One of the criticisms of this device as per the article is that the critics feel that it might entrap marine life. That sounds like a reasonable criticism and is one that is refuted by the inventor saying that the ‘net’ is towed at low enough speeds and it also has various lights, escape paths etc. as mitigations but nobody seems to say either “it was zero caught so pffft to that criticism” or “yes a small amount were caught up but was it a small enough number that the benefits to species x,y,z outweigh the small amount of accidental damage” or (from the critics) “it was a fish massacre”.

I appreciate there might be technical reasons why the inventor is unable to determine the exact quantity (if any) however the absence of any quantities being mentioned at all is puzzling and either a missed opportunity to ‘slay the nay-sayers’ or is something they would rather not mention.

In fairness there may be an exact figure available somewhere out there but wasn’t something a quick dig through the first few pages of search results revealed.

Bali did a deep clean during the lockdown, more than 10x that amount:

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/solving-balis-ri...

20k lbs sounds like nothing in the grand scheme of things, but that is a start, I guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c