week 7--Beautiful Sunrise & Mystery solved for Ginger in zone 4

This week John was out of town on Monday, so I walked by myself.  I just knew that I would find tracks, but I was wrong.  However, I was rewarded with a very beautiful sunrise.

I started my day at Crystal Pier, which I am happy to say was quite clean compared to most mornings.  The trash cans in this area were all overflowing and the birds were having fun taking trash out of the cans.  I really hope the town will eventually purchase cans with lids so that the wind and birds cannot remove the trash from the cans.  We make this suggestion every year and hopefully it will eventually come to pass.

I picked up at least 4 bags of trash.  Some of that included:

7 plastic bottles
18 straws
18 bottle caps
3 random shoes
1 ziplock bag
15 toys
2 styrofoam cups
1 unopened beer can
42 cigarette butts
3 plastic lids
4 balloons or pieces of balloons
3 panty lines (seriously, 3?!  What is going on?!)
1 plastic fork and 1 plastic spoon
1 medicine dropper
1 towel
1 t-shirt

I often pick up plastic "phoenix-shaped" pieces that I had guessed was the top of a kids juice drink, but I was never sure, until today.  There in the wrack line, someone had left the top and the "koolaid" plastic bottle!  Now I know---mystery has been solved.   Wonder if Koolaid would be happy that its bottle tops are littered on the beach?  Wonder if they would be responsible enough to make an industry change?

The wrack line which seems to be composed of mainly reeds is starting to collect a lot more trash and cigarette butts as the tides wash in and out and as we have more beach goers on the beach.  Sadly, many of the items in the wrack line are plastic one time use/disposable items that are truly not necessary such as this plastic lid.

I saw many people on the beach today who were thankful for my efforts (that is always nice).  One mother and daughter asked if I was picking up trash.  They then proceeded to tell me that they had removed a mylar balloon from the water line and placed it in the wrack line until they came back to get it at the end of their walk.  This gave me an opportunity to thank them and to educate about how marine life mistake balloons for food.  They were really concerned about the entanglement potential as the balloon had a long string attached.

Mylar balloon with long string

yellow balloon

Once I was finished with zone 4, I headed to Access 18 in Zone 3 to pick up trash.  I did this because John and I adopted this Access and we clean it once a month.  I have been really neglectful in getting my reports to the town, but will try to do better.

At Access 18 I picked up another 4 bags of trash in about 15 minutes.  It was crazy.  

Here is some of my loot from Access 18

5 plastic bottles

11 straws

8 bottle caps

1 very cute elmo water shoe

2 ziplock bags

1 plastic bag

14 toys

1 styrofoam cup

92 cigarette butts

2 plastic lids

1 plastic spoon, 1 plastic fork, 2 plastic knives (all one time use products)

3 aluminum cans

1 glass bottle with koozie attached

1 mesh net that toys come in

1 sock

1 ladies shirt

...and 2 plastic leis that had been washed in by the tide and was one tangled mess with some evidence of sargassum attached.  I shudder to think about this floating along the gulf stream with sargassum where sea turtle hatchlings and other marine life feed on micro-organisms.

Finally, I was finished picking up trash for the day---or so I thought.

I got on the KIC bike and headed to WB Farmer's Market--I had to stop on my way back and pick up these three plastic bags that were in a ditch. (these will not be counted in the WB trash as they were picked up off-island)