Golf Ball in the Ocean

[The Recreational Golfer]

Teenage Diver Finds Tons Of Golf Balls Rotting Off California : NPR

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Alex Weber discovered more than 50,000 balls in the ocean near coastal California golf courses. When golf balls degrade, as these were doing...

 

[chilepepper]

The quotes in that article are golden. So sensational 

[chspeed]

 

[iacas]

I don't doubt that it's a bit of a problem. That's a lot of golf balls in a place they don't really belong.

[chspeed]

9 minutes ago, iacas said:

I don't doubt that it's a bit of a problem. That's a lot of golf balls in a place they don't really belong.

Yes. This has been known for a while. There's a piece I read years ago in the NYT. When someone was searching for Nessie in Scotland, they found 100k golf balls, but alas, no Loch Ness monster. Here's the article:

The Burden and Boon of Lost Golf Balls

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Lost golf balls are conspicuous evidence of the sport’s negative ecological impact. Meanwhile, finding and reselling them has become a lucrative...

Considering hundreds of millions of golf balls are sold every year in the US alone, all those lost balls go somewhere. Makes me want to buy used balls.

 

[dennyjones]

People make a living retrieving water logged golf balls.  A couple of years ago we went to play at a course that has many holes around a big lake and a diver was coming up with an athletic bag full of golf balls.   He said his van was packed from top to bottom. 

[NM Golf]

[bkuehn1952]

I believe long ago, passenger ships would allow passengers to hit balls into the ocean.  That doesn't occur anymore.

[treebound]

Sometimes I’ll walk along the edge of a golf course near work and in the off season I can easily find 10-100 golf balls in the rough along just two or three fairways.

Sometimes I wonder why the EPA (or in Wisconsin the Dept. of Natural Resources) hasn’t mandated penalties for lost golf balls. Then I just assume that a lot of them must play golf too.