Thanks for mentioning my little rant and glad it kind of got you fired up to write this wonderful post.

I believe a small-scale version of

Instead of allowing the water through the basket, a catch basin would fill up like the Bell Siphon, allowing all the trash floating on the surface to fall down with it.

this is already in place. It's definitely a first step towards cleaning the ocean and its environment, but large-scale would cause greater issues with this type in my opinion.