A Plastic Ocean

For the quality of the documentary it deserves a high rating. It's extremely well done, with tons of data that are easy to understand as it's all well explained. The documentary itself is not something that will cheer you up, quite the contrary, as we're all just witnessing how we slowly, if you can call slowly a century in earth's time, destroying our planet by poluting it like there is no tomorrow. Recycling is the only solution. Banishing plastic completely would be better but we all know that's just utopic as there is too much money involved. The negative reviewers on here just prove that stupidity is all around us and it's not going to get better as the population will reach 10 billion by 2050, and so tons and tons of more polution. Glad I have no children.

I found this Documentary very Sickning and Distressing and that we continue to allow our wildlife to suffer as they do.

You'll find some commenters Dismissing this documentary as garbage, Unscientific and Unrealistic,... How Neive and Unworldly this world really is is just has Shoocking to me and no wounder our Oceans are as they are.

When was the last time you visited the Ocean?

I know everytime I've visited the Ocean, there is Plastic everywhere and its commonsense to conclude that our wildlife will and Do mistakenly eat some of this plastic believing it to be food,...

Some of these animals are then caught and processed into the Human food chain.

We Need to Change no Matter you view on this Documentary!

This film is so anxious to blame the US with its net non recycled production of all plastic slightly higher than Europe that it fails to even mention once that the types of plastics that are believed by the science to be the biggest contributors are in fact sourced form Asia and Europe at much higher rate per capita. It also when needed for its narrative switches between consumption and production, as if Europe's higher consumption than production makes it more benign. kind of reminds me of "Inconvenient Truth" and its manipulation of data, making the US the leading contributor to carbon output when not mention hat because of the huge efficiencies of the US, the US is producing more goods and food with less carbon per ton grown than Asia, Africa or Europe. The reason for the low acceptance of the science on global warming is an effect of the obscene level of manipulation of figures on production and consumption to resulting production, that allows the US to be blamed, and using this to rationalize subjecting the US to super-national redistribution of money and wealth. The science on the problem is real, the science on the solutions is flat earth junk science and statistical manipulation. Productivity in its ratio to carbon and plastic use matters.

the makers of this film would have been much better off in science communications if they had stuck to the science, instead of promulgating poltical diatribes that do not stand scrutiny of some basic logical controls

I mainly enjoyed the documentary, could be a bit more well produced though. It should be, in my opinion, more about the plastic in the ocean per se, the consequences, direct and indirect, the study cases (and there are thousands of those), as it was in the first part, and less about the human self-destruction with garbage (2nd part).

All in all this documentary is a 50% of good scientific proof of the damage plastic is to our environment/our possible future, and 50% of opinion journalism. I don't dislike the opinions, but most are uninformed and there are some scientific errors here and there.

Still I give it a positive review, as it can achieve its goal into showing people what our mindless action can do to the environment and, in the midle/long term, to us! I would recommend it, but be aware of some sensasionalistic opinions.

In 2011, journalist Craig Leeson is doing a nature documentary on the blue whale, a giant of the sea. He is hundreds of miles in the middle of nowhere. He's doing underwater filming and he gets surprised by a floating cloud of plastic garbage. It starts a journey to uncover the damage done by the increasing amount of plastic trash washing out to sea and into the food chain. It's an eye-opening and distressing tale ever since the floating islands of garbage made it into international news.

There is a closing section about solutions. That's probably the only problematic section. It gets preachy with the fast food joints although it's hard to get things done without being preachy. It also highlights recycling but its difficulties are papered over. There is a general Pollyanna tone to some of the mechanical solutions. According to the doc, it is a gold mine ready to be picked through and that's really stretching the truth. I don't mind some blemish with the planet's salvation. Also it gives false hope which could diminish the urgency to reduce plastic use. Overall, it is a compelling piece of advocacy doc.