UFOrb
Contributor
I think a lot of the people creating the trash have no idea it is happening.
When I dived in what seemed like landfills in Bali, the trash involved was mostly household trash, like plastic bags that once had held frozen food purchased in a market. My guess is the path it took was as follows: consumer uses the product>consumer disposes of it through community disposal service>Community disposal service picks it up>Community disposal service dumps it in the ocean, thus avoiding the fees associated with legal dumping>Community disposal service pays annual fee to officials who look the other way.
When I was last in the Akumal area in Mexico, unusual wind patterns brought piles of trash into Akumal Bay every day we were there. Workers were busy raking it up into huge piles. A quick glance showed that the trash was primarily from either cruise ships or resorts. A friend of mine took a cruise a few years ago and could not sleep one night, He went out to take a walk around 3:00 AM and was horrified to see the crew dumping huge bags of garbage into the ocean. I would bet that 90% of the passengers would be outraged to learn that their trash was going there.
Shocking! But sadly your first example is not particularly surprising, and this makes me hate cruise ships even more!