What we experienced was not ALL fun. First of all, our dog pooped on the beach and we forgot to bring something to get it up. Fortunately, our friends and fellow KIC volunteers, Kim Shovlin and her son Patrick, were also at the beach celebrating a 50th birthday party. I went to borrow a container (won't mention what) ;-) from Kim while John combed the beach for something with which to pick up the poop. It did not take him long to find a toy shovel that had been left behind.
Besides attending to a pooping dog, we also noticed a crowd gathered on the beach attending to an injured surfer. As it turns out, the surfer needed to be transported by helicopter off the island to the emergency room. We were all very concerned for the surfer and our thoughts and prayers are with him. The news as he was being airlifted was hopeful.
Also disturbing was the amount of marine debris that has washed up on Masonboro. Much of it had been in the ocean for sometime as it had barnacles and sea life attached. We picked up what we could and made a plan to come back the next day with our reusable trash bags to remove more.
When we returned on Sunday, we covered about 1/2 mile of beach (give or take) and removed wads and wads of fishing line that were entangled in the wrack material along with entangled fabric and many entangled plastic bags! We also collected 10 pairs of goggles and sunglasses in addition to several pair that we had thrown away the day before. There were lots of aluminum can pieces that had been in the ocean since who knows when!
All together, we removed 31 lbs of trash!!! A sad day for Masonboro. The island has never looked so bad. There is much more to do to keep our preserved island beautiful and our oceans healthy.
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