Beach Awareness

'She turned her can'ts into cans and her dreams into plans'

~Kate Yamado

A few months ago, in April, I went to Myrtle Beach, in South Carolina, during my school's Spring Break. When I was there, I went to the beach at least once a day. Anyone who's ever been to a decent beach would know just how spectacular beaches can be. The beach that I went to was amazing, and I go there a few times a year. But, despite its beach-ly beauty, serenity, calm presence, there was something entirely unsettling about it. And I bet you can guess what that was ( if you've been reading my latest posts). Yep, you guessed it- pollution. Everywhere along the pristine sandy shores there is trash, which = a hazard to marine life. Some of the things that are extremely bad to the wonderful sea and its amazing creatures are:

Plastic Bags: Extremely bad! Sea turtles can choke on, and will mistake a dangerous plastic bag for a delicious jellyfish! 

Plastic Pellets: Marine birds will wrongly exchange one of these death-baring pellets for a crab or another type of food, and try to eat it. In the late 1970’s, when it was first discovered that medical waste, trash, and plastics were very harmful to marine life, marine birds could be cut open only to find a piece of plastic inside their stomachs! Very dangerous!

Straw Wrappers And Other Trash: Like I said before, marine life will take a plastic straw wrapper instead of a scrumptious fish, and it will kill them!

I stood there on the beach, flabbergasted and outraged at everything I was seeing. Who would litter a perfectly good beach? And why? So that they wouldn’t have to walk to the nearest trash can to throw their trash away?                          

Since I was to be going to the beach at least once a day for the next week or so, I decided to do something. Gathering some of my friends {Pia Kleiner, Ben Goodrum)(who had come with me}, we grabbed trash bags, gloves (as so that we wouldn’t spread bacteria or other germs), and got to work!

We spread out along the beach, picking up any pieces of trash or plastics that we saw!

                      Picture by Molly Irani

It was so much fun, and I felt great, knowing that I was helping to contribute to the gigantic act that is called saving our planet!

How can you help save our planet? Let me know by commenting on this post - your comment could be used in my next post! And comment on any of the others if you have questions! I want to hear what you have to say! Also, I will be posting daily, so please, you're welcome to follow my blog to get alerted whenever I post something knew! (You can sign up to follow 'A Whale Of An Idea' at the very bottom of my blog, where my first post is)!

So please remember to be alert and aware when you're making decisions that can, and will effect our Earth - you are the best hope we have! And a good rule that one of my old teachers used to tell us is:

'What would happen if everyone did this?' and this is important because if everybody littered, what would happen to our world? It would be DESTROYED!!!!!