Clean up your beach!

As you know, St. Kitts is lucky to be home to several species of sea turtle. Ross students and VIPs try to help out the turtles as much as they can. Today, Rob and I, plus about 40 other people, participated in one of the many beach clean-ups held throughout the semester.

Sign at North Friar's Beach. Don't get in the water...

On beach clean-up days, everyone meets at the IGA parking lot at 7am. I usually say no, cause I am selfish and love sleeping late. Well, Rob went ahead and signed us (yep US), up anyway. He didn't bother telling me, I found out when I got a confirmation email. Being married is awesome :) Today, we got out butts out of bed at 6:30, I get dressed, go put my shoes on, and happen to glance out the window. It was POURING!!! Oy vey.

View down the beach with the the clean up in full swing.

When we got to IGA, there were so many people that we split in half to cover two beaches. Half of the group went to Keys beach, and our group went to North Friar's beach. NF Beach is not really a swimming beach; it is on the Atlantic side and has pretty rough surf, and (according to a sign) a terrible rip tide.  It is also a beach that turtles nest on. There were about 23-28 people on our beach, and we each got a bag and started picking up trash. There were tons of small bits of plastic- synthetic rope, bottles and bottle caps, wrappers, hair clips, broken toys... Rob and I even found 4 different shoes and 7 pieces of plywood (with rusty nails sticking out). Other people found shoes too, and huge pieces of plastic and foamy material. It was pretty disgusting. I think everyone filled up at least two bags. Plus, there was still tons of small bits of plastic that would take forever to completely clear. So, that's about 50 bags of trash, a bunch of wood pieces, plus any trash brought up from the beach after I left. Yuck! I felt pretty bad as I cleaned up. I wondered how many times I carelessly threw something away without making sure it landed in the trash... Humans are wasteful and dirty!

Just a portion of the trash we collected. 

Even though I hate waking up early, I would definitely go to another beach clean-up. I want the turtles to have a clean and safe place to nest. I don't want the mommy or baby turtles to get hurt or sick!

Only in St. Kitts... 

As a final bonus, on the way home from the beach, Kate and I passed a pretty ridiculous site. A broken light post, with power lines still attached, held up by a ladder. Not an A-frame ladder, a lean against the wall kind of ladder. Don't worry though, there were two cones, so it was totally safe!

For all the beach clean up pictures, click here.