Never Turn Your Back on The Ocean

This blog is dedicated to keeping Brevard County, Florida beaches a little bit cleaner for the love of people and animals.

 Never turn your back on the ocean is advice, I discovered Tuesday morning, not only for surfers with breakers bearing down on them.....

  Weekend storms in Brevard dredged up tons of  broken plastic.  The beach was strewn with the stuff along with plastic bottle caps, bottles, juice box straws, rope, and shredded balloons, among other nasty finds.
Together my partner in grime and I collected about 20 lbs of trash. It feels like a small dent but it's a positive dent.

Glad it was just the wrapper

Watch where you step

What a tangled web we leave...

A torn wet mess of a blanket half buried just above the tide line caught our attention. Digging like dogs we were determined to extricate this shredded ugly mess-with our backs to the ocean.. Suddenly a rush of water surged into us and we watched in horror as our plastic bags full of trash-that we spent over an hour collecting- washed into the sea we were trying to protect.   I know mother ocean was rolling her eyes and shaking her head.  We charged into the water and (thankfully they were floating pretty much upright) were able to grab the bags with little spillage.

Among the worst offenders

Grossest trash of the day- tampon applicator,- yuck. Most dangerous for animals- balloons and rope. Sea turtles and other creatures eat balloons thinking they are jellyfish and their bodies tell them they are full; resulting in starvation. Rope gets tangled around fins and flukes of marine animals; causing injury and death.  Even if you don't want to do a full clean up, if you're at the beach and you see a balloon or rope please dispose of it to keep it out of the ocean and away from innocent creatures-- they didn't make the mess.
I'm doing a clean up almost everyday and I never know what I will find.  I'll be sharing it here...........
Thanks for stopping by, Beach Hugger.