Take a look at the first picture above! This is the trash that a friend and I picked up in literally five minutes after landing our sea kayaks on Great Island’s little beach this recent July! We had stopped to have a shoreside lunch, but sitting by our kayaks and looking at the sullied tide line beckoned action. We picked up as much as we could.
It’s quite an assortment. The clear plastic wraps are sea-worn mylar balloons (a real scourge in Long Island Sound). The usual candy wrappers and plastic cups and lids are present. There are also two baseball caps in the mix, a yellow rubber fishing lure, a wiffle ball, a golf ball, a beer can, a raft paddle, and my favorite, a bucket to hold it all – handily found floating near the beach at that precise moment! The trash was at or below the high tide mark and much of it intermingled with the beach’s seaweed. Some of it was clearly visible, some not. And we didn’t pick up everything. Many pieces were too small for our quick hit.
In a second fit of environmental zeal, I took all the items home, cleaned them with fresh water and dried them before laying them out on my living room floor for the photo-op. It just felt important to document what I had so rapidly collected on one beach landing. After all, this is Great Island, our beautiful and newly acquired town property. Many of us regularly kayak or boat around Great Island, Zeigler’s Cove, Scott Cove and the Fish Islands. We feel passionate about this stretch of water. It is as beautiful as many portions of the Maine coast.
Find out what's happening in Darienfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
So, who is to blame for this abundant deposit of litter? Well, it’s not Great Island’s visitors. This trash quite clearly came from the sea. It was weathered and interwoven into the surrounding seaweed on the beach. It’s what our heavily congested populations in western Long Island Sound consume, and then in a multitude of ways, discard and allow to float up on our shorelines.
Collectively, we all have to do better at curbing marine debris such as this. Becoming aware of the problem is a good first step. Then altering your consumption and disposal of packaging, plastics and disposable goods is needed. Finally, picking up litter on our shores and lands is always good. Darien’s Coastal Commission and other volunteer groups undertake seasonal shoreside clean-ups to combat the problem. The second picture above is of the town’s Coastal Commission and First Selectman Monica McNally from several years ago. In just three hours of work, this group picked up 240 pounds of trash from our shorelines. Debris free waters and shores? They’re up to us.
