Beach Clean Up

On Sunday I participated in the Ocean Use and Management Beach Clean Up. Having never been to a beach in Nova Scotia, I was amazed by how beautiful Crystal Crescent is, although I was a bit thrown off by the amount of garbage!!! The random artifacts in the rocks, such as a home made bomb, or a dirt bike helmet for instance. The evidence of longshore drift was apparent as there are more concentrations of garbage in certain areas. The most amount of garbage was found entangled in the rocks.

As I was walking home from the library that evening in the rain, I noticed the immense amount of garbage in our streets, and I thought if we are this lazy on land, how lazy are we with our garbage in the ocean?! In Monday's Ocean Use and Management class, Cathy mentioned in the 1950's parts of Nova Scotia dumped their waste into the ocean, over cliffs. I am sure that is still not all that far off with boats traveling in the sea.

A major societal wake up needs to occur. For example, the abundance of cigarette butts on the ground. Yes its a good thing that patrons aren't smoking in public venues and subjecting others to second hand smoke, but how is it okay to subject the public to your butts littering the ground? The city should put ash tray's around the city to deter this pollution. These get washed away by rainwater and enter our sewar system, which ultimately ends up in our oceans.

We need to WAKE UP!!!