Great article highlighting the ever increasing environmental impacts of irresponsible human behavior. Years ago when I took part in the Coastal Cleanup Program I would donate the use of my tour boat for transporting volunteers to islands in Frenchman Bay where they would collect and bag various items of trash along the shoreline. On one memorable 3 hour trip we filled the entire cockpit of a 40' lobster boat I borrowed for the day with contractor bags full of trash. Styrofoam cups, motor oil bottles, bleach bottles, running shoes, hundreds and hundreds of feet of polypropylene rope, rubber boots, one complete scuba divers wetsuit (with no one inside), styrofoam lobster buoys, items of clothing, styrofoam coolers, rubber gloves, beer cans and bottles, soda bottles, fish nets, and one large propane cylinder. When we ran out of room in the lobster boat we piled additional bags of trash into our 12' skiff. If memory serves it took 2 town dump trucks to transport the trash to the transfer station. Now comes the truly shocking part...using that 40' boat and 8 person crew it would probably take over a year of 8 hour days to make a meaningful dent in the trash piled up along the shores of Frenchman Bay!
Great article highlighting the ever increasing environmental impacts of irresponsible human behavior. Years ago when I took part in the Coastal Cleanup Program I would donate the use of my tour boat for transporting volunteers to islands in Frenchman Bay where they would collect and bag various items of trash along the shoreline. On one memorable 3 hour trip we filled the entire cockpit of a 40' lobster boat I borrowed for the day with contractor bags full of trash. Styrofoam cups, motor oil bottles, bleach bottles, running shoes, hundreds and hundreds of feet of polypropylene rope, rubber boots, one complete scuba divers wetsuit (with no one inside), styrofoam lobster buoys, items of clothing, styrofoam coolers, rubber gloves, beer cans and bottles, soda bottles, fish nets, and one large propane cylinder. When we ran out of room in the lobster boat we piled additional bags of trash into our 12' skiff. If memory serves it took 2 town dump trucks to transport the trash to the transfer station. Now comes the truly shocking part...using that 40' boat and 8 person crew it would probably take over a year of 8 hour days to make a meaningful dent in the trash piled up along the shores of Frenchman Bay!