by JuanP » Mon 09 Mar 2015, 21:32:15
I have been cleaning beaches at least since I was five. I know this as a fact because when I was five my parents had to take me to the hospital because I had a huge palm tree thorn stuck inside my hand from when I fell into it trying to reach a plastic milk bag on the dunes. I received a tetanus shot and had the thorn removed and hand bandaged for a few days.
My wife and I still clean shores on a weekly basis during our packrafting expeditions on Biscayne Bay and the Florida Keys. There is so much trash on the uninhabited islands that we mostly burn everything that will burn now, including plastics, rubber, and treated lumber. I know its bad for global warming, but I think it is the best choice we have. I can't stand the trash. We bring back and recycle unbroken glass bottles and aluminum cans.
I won't even get started on the amount of dolphins, manatees, turtles, birds, and other animals I've found killed by plastic particles on their digestive system, sliced to pieces by powerboats, or tangled up in fishing lines or lobster trap lines, sick, scared, and hurt. We've saved some ourselves, called professionals for assistance when necessary and possible, but many times we are too late and the animals are dead or need to be put down. I volunteer at a Marine Bird Rescue Station, and the things I've seen, there and elsewhere, have made me a misanthrope. Everything is dying around us.
Humans are by far the most murderous of all species.
"Human stupidity has no limits" JuanP