I never new until I got real close in my kayak.
The keys I mean. On the cost side and the inland side. The trash and nasty mess in those mangroves are ugly. The rivers smell like sewage. I'm not impressed.

 

I know you mean "coastline", but is the smell that bad?

The trash part is just people not giving a "sheet".

 

You should visit the center of the Pacific and the center of about any of the large
ocean. There is every manner of plastic floating there forever circling. Try a search
for pacific trash heap or trash islands, Now that is disgusting some international
council needs to convert a ship to lift it's bow and swallow up all that melt it with a
catalyst and make it a reef or something bringing it to shore is a problem too since
alot of the plastic involved is too far gone to recycle (barnacles, old, etc) That
smell goes with the territory coming from Arizona I can see how it would smell to
you since you are not use to that amount of lifeforms starting, completing and
fighting for their lifecycle!! The amount of things living on a sq foot of mangrove
swamp ground is utterly amazing only eclipsed by the amount of death that is
happening on that same sq foot of real estate!! That smell is life of course the
trash is from people but I have seen many a things living it that trash, Fish in
bottles, shrimp in beer cans, all manner of arthropods living on submerged carpet
cinder blocks are like little artificial reefs. Of course the human added stuff should
NOT be there but it is and life will survive with it or with out it!! I have seen eagles
flying with a wal mart bag taunting the other eagle and buzzards with the bag it
sounded like a kite or something I thought that is weird I looked around and saw a
blue thing hauling @$$ around buzzing the other birds, I wish I had a camera that
day everyone says no way they wouldn't PLAY with a man made thing.

 

People use the waters as dumping grounds.

It will catch up to us, in a big way.

 

Yea, and I don't know how it would ever be cleaned up. It would be very difficult to get to the trash because it's caught up in the mangroves.

 

Well, it would take a lot of dedicated environmentalists, in kayaks/canoes/johnboats floating around and manually cleaning it up.

Much the same way as those organizations who adopt stretches of highway and sweep it for litter on a regular basis.

 

They do it here on earth day people spread out those with boats hit the waters,
others hit the beaches and shorelines. I know they get tons of stuff and bookoo
cigg filters some company donates the dumpsters and bags. I saw a canoe filled
with trash where the people didn't have room to move without something going
overboard!! It is pathetic but maybe that is what we are here for to invent plastic
spread it across the earth when mother nature sees we have done are job she
will turn up the heat, increase storms, stop rain until we are gone and whatever
need she had for the plastic is fulfilled we will be gone the way of the dinosaurs
whos job it was to suck up the Oxygen to bring down atmospheric content so
plants could thrive. Maybe maybe NOT!!

 

The kayakers in the Tampa / St. Pete area spend several weekends each year cleaning up the mess made by boaters. They get garbage bags full of mono line, broken beer coolers and other assorted junk. The kayaks are perfect for this job because they can get into the delicate sea grass and Mangroves without damaging them.


Most of the kayakers I go out with take a garbage bag every time they go out to clean up unwanted trash. They are a good bunch of people.

Doug

 

The Keys have only been that way in recent years. 20 years ago, Florida Bay (the inland side of the Keys) was clear and fresh. You could watch barracuda race across the flats. The last few times we went, the water was murky and full of alga, and it stunk. The culprit? Fertilizer run-off from our friends in the sugar industry. The lower half of the FL peninsula is (was) a river about 1" deep. The fertilizers and pesticides run off and wind up in the Keys, causing excess growth. Part of the reason coral reefs are so clear is that the water has no nutrient. Now, much of the coral reefs are dead, and the Bay is a mess. I've been diving there for 28 years, and watched all this happen. Water visibility has dropped from 100' to 25', and most of the coral is dead. If we stopped all the pollution right now, it would bounce back in a mere thousand years or so (coral grows VERY slowly). The colorful trash bobbing in the water is just an added benefit. How sad.

 

this is where i do most of my fishing, i use my flats boat in the upper tampa bay area....most of the trash you se floating is from the skanks that fish from the courtney campbell causeway. everything from beer bottles to plastic bags. they will bbq on the causeway, ignore the 100 trash cans put there by the city, and leave the trash on the ground. i see it blow into the water, i see birds pick up trash and fly off with it.

kayakers, and people do come out every couple of weekends or so and put some time in. but we are heavily outnumbered by the ones that dont care.

this is where i go 3-5 times a week after work to watch the sunset listen to some tunes and fish from the shore myself. ive been seeing this for years and its getting worse.


ill admit this one, last year, i watched a guy pull over to the side,open up his door and he kicked out 3 or 4 empty bottles and left them next to his truck. he grabbed his pole, and walked down by the shoreline. about 10 minutes later when i was ready to leave, and had about 3 ounces of clam in my mouth, i slowly drove by his vehicle and launched a beauty right inside of the truck. call me a loser or whatever, but i was insulted from what he did, and i could have confronted him, and it would have gotten ugly.

did it solve the problem, no? did i feel better? yes

 

Yes you're a loser.

I would have launched 6 ounces of clam from my mouth inside his truck.

 

...lmao....

 

I always end up picking up other people trash, but in a kayak you can only get so much.
I saw a white plastic bag in the mangroves one day.....thought it was some nose candy or maybe some drug money......yeaaaa.
Ended up being a very soiled diaper.
Pheeew!
There goes my money