Let the Preaching Begin....

While I was in Los Angeles for a week, Cyndi volunteered at a Surfrider beach cleanup here in Rincon. They worked at Maria's which is a beautiful spot where we take the dogs often. They picked up at least 15 bags of trash; bottles, glass, cans, straws, clothes and all other sorts of trash that people take with them to the beach or that the wind blows onto the beach from the nearby road.

Surfrider held this beach cleanup day as a worldwide event, so beaches all over Rincon, the Caribbean and the rest of the Earth were made cleaner on this single day by volunteers like Cyndi. Obviously the cleanup makes the beach nicer, but so much trash effects the animal and plant life in and out of the water. I recently saw a documentary where oceanographers were tracking a giant cluster of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. It was hundreds of miles long and wide, made up of water bottles, fishing line, 6-pack holders and small plastic globules that are used in industrial plastic manufacturing. It was disturbing to see the amount of trash that had made it's way out to sea and the effect it was having on the sea life.

It seems pretty obvious that we need to take care of our oceans, but apparently not to everyone. At the risk of sounding preachy, next time you're at the beach, take a few minutes to pick up any trash you see; even if everyone doesn't do it, for those that do it will make a huge difference, and it makes you feel good.

The Rincon chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, http://www.surfrider.org/rincon/index.php is headed by Wes Merten. He held a meeting on Thursday, so we went to see what they were working on. There were only about 8 other people there, which even though a lot of people from Rincon are out of town this time of year, seems like a very low amount considering it's such a wave-loving community. The next project is installing 24 new trashcans at some of the beaches around Rincon. It's great that Surfrider has the money and the connections to be able to do this kind of thing as it makes keeping the beaches clean a little easier if there are less excuses not to.

Cyndi and I are both looking forward to being more involved with Surfrider and a few other organizations here in Rincon that make the town a better place to live. We're setting our roots here and it's important for us to work toward improving our environment and not leave it up to someone else.