Among other things, there were coconuts:
Mollusk-encrusted containers:
Bamboo clusters:
More jellyfish:
And this picturesque assortment of hawsers and other ropes:
I was out on the beach yesterday with a trash bag, and will be out again to pick up more debris. Actually, much of it was already gone. If you see any of this flotsam or jetsam please pick it up. We seldom see this much junk on Ocracoke's beach. Let's all help keep our beach litter-free!
Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter is an article by island resident, Crystal Canterbury, about her very first visit to Portsmouth Village, on the last day of 2014. You can read Part I here: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news042115.htm.
Plastic bottles, shoes and Burlap bags---suppose all those items came off a boat filled to the gills with human cargo. People that paid their life savings to come to America but due to the fact they never had a chance of surviving the rough seas in a doomed vessel .... this scenario is not outlandish. The opportunistic boat captains that tow an overloaded vessel to be cut loose and wash ashore have already been paid ---and think nothing of casting the fate of others to the wind.
ReplyDeleteplastic bottles shoes and burlap sacks
I have nothing but the shirt on my back
My last drop of fresh water is gone
Set adrift at sea
What will my future be
I will close my eyes and hope for the best
as I rest and take my last earthly breath
If you find my plastic bottle, shoe and burlap sack
please remember that there are others that follow behind me
We hope to be free in a land of opportunity but my fate was cast to the wind
and now I'm sorry to bring trash upon your beach
America is out of touch to me
The other day 21 kilos of cocaine, nicely packaged as bricks, washed up on a Florida beach.
ReplyDeletesquare groupers.
DeleteI take two bags when I go to the beach; one for shells, one for trash. The trash bag almost always has more than the shell bag. The one category of things that I almost always find are balloon remnants and/or ribbons that were attached to balloons. If I find these each time I go to the beach it makes me wonder how many more I am NOT finding.
ReplyDeleteThere is an organization dedicated to stopping the foolhardy practice of mass balloon releases at store grand openings, weddings, sorority rush etc etc. Grocery stores that hand out balloons to children should be fined heavily -- the balloon industry is contributing to the land fills or try and get political conventions to halt the practice of dumping balloons on the delegates in a celebratory gesture ha! Why doesn't OI step up to the plate and ban balloons from the Island??? It will send a message we don't want trash washing up on someone else's shore.
ReplyDeleteMost of the balloons we find on Ocracoke arrive on the wind from places on the mainland.
DeleteSo is this the Happy Earth Day message? We all need to be stewards of the earth in whatever capacity this means. We need more legislation and education of the political issues, and what about the Koch brothers? Carrying a bag to the beach or the woods or in your neighborhood is a good thing to do, but we need to get more serious if we are to save our planet. And that, my friends, is most unlikely.
ReplyDeleteyou have 2 choices. either step over it or pick it up and move on.
ReplyDeleteCoconuts? Are you suggesting coconuts are migratory?
ReplyDelete