Beverly's Beach Cleanup, Day 4

As I have posted about earlier, a reader of The Daily Ocean Blog, Beverly, took me up on my invitation to collect trash at a beach near her and contribute to my Community Collection Count.

The Community Collection Count works like this.

- find a beach near you

- take a walk for 20 min. and collect trash

- take pictures, weigh your trash and send my your info.

- I'll post your findings here on The Daily Ocean.

Beverly spent many days during her last vacation doing this, here is Day four of her beach cleanup adventures. Again, thank you Beverly!

Goosewing Beach (Little Compton) October 5: 1 lbs. 4 oz. collected

I have a little trouble getting to Goosewing Beach, which is a preserve adjacent to South Shore Beach, separated by a stream that’s not passable at high tide. From the map it looks like there’s a road in to the beach but that turns out to be private property. An electronic gate confirms that.

So, I drive on to Padanarum Village and return to Goosewing Beach at low tide when it’s easy to walk across to the beach.

Goosewing Beach is extremely clean – I see the plus side of limited access to a beach. Few gulls, and very little trash. I find a few things – plastic pieces, fishing line, half a fishing rod. I enjoy walking for a few minutes, actually straining to find trash. The sun feels great and the water is beautiful – just rocks and seaweed on the wet sand. In the end I’ve got only 1 lbs. 4 oz. gathered from my 20 minute walk.

South Shore Beach (Little Compton) October 5: 3 lbs. collected

On Monday I head out to Little Compton – out from Newport, through Middletown and Portsmouth, over the bridge, through Tiverton and on to Little Compton. South Shore Beach is the Town Beach for Little Compton, houses and and fishing cottages clustered near the beach. It’s high tide and the waves break hard on this soft sandy beach. The sky is clear and you can see Westport, Massachusetts in the distance.

The gulls are loud as I pick up trash. These beaches are very quiet in off season but today some families are there, children run in the sun and couples drive by to take a walk on the beach. Beach lovers enjoying Monday morning in October. Life is pretty good when you can start the week with a walk on the beach.

I’m finding the usual plastic, a plastic sandal, a plastic (empty) bottle of Johnny Walker Red. In the end I’ve collected 3 lbs. No garbage cans here – but the port-a-potty does have hand sanitizer (thank you , Little Compton). I throw my bag of trash in the back of my car and drive away.

Oct. 21 - MPA Hearings Long Beach

Devany speaking with Team Marine in front of the Blue Ribbon Task Force

I went to Long Beach last night with about 80 Santa Monica High School Students. We took two buses and braved rush hour traffic on the 405 freeway. There were other students there, but no one had the same turn out that we did. Heal the Bay bought pizza for all the students and rented the buses.
We filled half the room with blue shirts to show support for Map 3 of the Marine Protected Area proposals.

On the way down I talked to the students about how there may be people there who were upset, would taught them, yell at them, make fun of them, and/or boo them. Even as I said this, I wanted to believe that no one would be so insensitive as to yell things at teenagers. But I was wrong.

The commercial fishing community showed out in strong numbers and a few of the men had no problem yelling at our students, or yelling at me. One man while riding down the escalator past us on our way up to register to speak during the public comment portion of the hearing, slapped the ass of one of one of the members of Team Marine. I wish I had been there and able to share with this gentleman just what I thought of his behavior. On second thought it is a good thing I wasn't there.
All in all, it was a great evening. I was proud of everyone for being bigger than the taunting and angry words thrown our way. I did keep reminding them that these men were scared because their financial security was being threatened and therefor they were not able to see our point of view, and were most likely acting in ways they normally might not. Although after seeing their behavior first hand, and witnessing one 40+ year old man repeatedly call a 17 yr. old young man stupid, out loud several times, the state may want to rethink his license to drive a boat.