images of goosewing beach little compton ri

“It’s meant to be invisible and unbreakable, so it’s a serious entanglement hazard to marine life,” she said. Lewis noted that monofilament fishing line is especially dangerous to marine life, because animals can easily become entangled in it. Most everything that lives in the ocean has some plastic in them.” “It’s hard to calculate exactly what that burden is and what the mortality may be from it, but it’s increasing because we know that the amount of plastics in our ocean is increasing. “Even if it’s not fatal, it’s a burden on these animals,” Lewis said.

Sea turtles consume plastic bags and latex balloons that they mistake for jellyfish whales that feed on large quantities of plankton can’t separate out the microplastics from the edible microorganisms and bits of plastic get caught in the gills of fish and the stomachs of birds. “It makes a difference in how people can enjoy our beaches.”įrom a wildlife perspective, however, it can be a life-or-death issue. “No one wants to come to a beach that’s covered in trash,” she said. July Lewis, who coordinates beach cleanups throughout the state for Save The Bay, said there are two aspects to the issue of marine debris: aesthetics and wildlife impacts. The plastic that isn’t consumed by wildlife eventually washes up on a beach. Much of it is still out there just waiting to be consumed by fish, sea turtles, albatrosses and other marine creatures. According to the documentary, “A Plastic Ocean,” about 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean annually. The problem of marine debris and beach trash is overwhelming. “You get huge pieces of netting all over the place, little pieces of green twine, pieces of tires they use on the draggers.” “Over a typical year, the largest volume of stuff I pick up is commercial fishing gear,” he said. He sometimes finds items covered in gooseneck barnacles, a species not found locally that Dennis said probably drifted north on the Gulf Stream. The other half drifted in on ocean currents and could have come from anywhere. Dennis estimated that about half of the trash he finds was dropped recently by people using the beaches.

Images of goosewing beach little compton ri