PVC and Rattlesnakes

Today, Mark decided to come play in the field. He has been on vacation since Christmas, so he hadn't seen the progress on the new road at Santa Rosa, and he wanted to check up on the birdies too. With saws and a mule in tow, we headed to the park around 9am.

Hurricane Ivan pretty much flattened Santa Rosa in 2004. Arlene and Dennis completed the job in 2005. Since then, no one has made an effort to clean the beach. Asphalt is scattered everywhere, miles and miles of PVC pipe litter the landscape and random hurricane debris intermixes with destroyed park structures. Mark has made it our mission this winter to remove all of the PVC on the island, which is not as easy as it sounds. This is one of two loads we removed today:



After struggling all day to get that small amount removed, Mark has decided to invest in an battery operated power saw -- it will make the job go faster, but it still won't be simple. Most of the pipe is buried in sand dunes, twisted at crazy angles and FULL of sand. Even ten foot long pieces weighed more than I do until we emptied them of their quartz cargo. This is going to be just the gym workout I need, and I get paid for it while making the environment much more beautiful. All we need to do now is find a way to recycle the tons of PVC we'll be removing. Any ideas?

Once we returned to Naval Live Oaks, we found a park visitor with this small, cold rattle snake in a cardboard box, searching for a new home. Sorry for the bad pic -- it's from my phone, but it does show the snake finding winter refuge in a gopher tortoise burrow, which is exactly where he belongs. Thanks, random visitor! Wish more people did that instead of just killing the poor snakes!

Time Capsule

I spent a good portion of this morning at the Fort Pickens Ranger Station, hunting around for satellite location data for Shelly and Sandy, two loggerheads tagged at the park several years ago. It was like walking into an office that stood still while life moved on in the distance. The last day is marked on the wall by the visitor's entrace, just in case anyone forgets what flattened the park...



There's evidence that those in the offices beat a hasty retreat. Garbage bags cover old computer components, boxes and paperwork are strewn across the floor, spilled coffee mugs roll on desktops, cans of cat food, labels faded by years of intense sun, stand by an east facing window, magazines, unopened mail, random rain jackets and gum wrappers, bug repellent and family photos weave a crazy trail through recent history.



I felt as if I was disturbing a memorial, and apologized to the room as I dug through the debris in my hunt for the elusive data. Once I unearthed the priceless paperwork, I headed back to my ATV to return to our temporary office. Traveling by ATV in late December with a box of paperwork is less than ideal, but three years post-storm, there still isn't a road out here. How have we allowed this to happen to one of our national treasures? Have we sunk so low in our quest in the middle east (for what?) that we our trashing our own country? What a waste...



Thankfully though, this retreat into the recent past reminds me of how much better things are today than they were three years ago -- at least we have an office (in a garage, but hey, it's dry and has heat!). The road closure has been great for the birds, though the sea turtles continue to struggle. The lost dunes, flattened landscape, light pollution and frequent flooding make it nearly impossible for nests to survive, even when they are present. There's a lot of work to do, and not just in the box of paperwork now sitting at my feet.

Mountains of Sand and Trash

When you have a place this beautiful to play -- miles of untouched beach -- how can you treat it with complete disregard? If I had these pristine beaches near my home, I know I would cherish them... I am always surprised by the way people behave when they no there is little chance they'll be caught.


We have long sections of the beach at Fort Pickens that have sandfencing to help rebuild the dunes after Ivan, Dennis, and Katrina. The fence is also meant to be a deterrent to visitors accessing the beach over new dunes. You would think this would work. While the fence does a great job catching sand and artificially recreating dunes from windblown sand, it doesn't keep people out. They just walk right over the fence! As a result, we had lots of signs printed and I spent the day posting these:



After that, I had time to do a little field work, assessing the shorebird population on the beach today. The sea turtles and shorebirds are finished nesting and hatching, so we have a lot more time for other pursuits. I had a mule with me, so I picked up a lot of trash too. By the end of the day, I we as totally depressed. I picked up a full load of trash just a few days ago, from the tides and visitors who don't use trash cans. I filled the mule again today, and I didn't even make a dent in the debris load. It would take a solid week to clean up the beach, then at least a day a week to maintain it. With staff as stretched as it is and the focus on getting the buildings reopened three years post-Ivan, there's no one to do this. If people just picked up their own trash, and maybe one or two extra pieces, this wouldn't be an issue. Finding so much trash makes me sound cranky, but I'm really not. It was nice to see I'd accomplished something at the end of the day. Knowing that I made this section of the park a more beautiful place for the animals and people that use it is a good feeling. I just wish it was easier! Check out what I picked up in less than an hour:



When I was a child, my grandparents used to take us to Crescent Beach, South Carolina. I loved playing on the wide beach at low tide, and often took walks with my grandmother. As a young child and teen, she would frustrate me with her slow pace. Grandmom insisted on walking from the sea to the dunes, picking up every bit of trash she could see, and carting it off the beach. In my impatience, all I wanted to do was play, but the lesson took hold. As I move up and down the beach now, like a shorebird bobbing for plastic food, I honor my grandmother and her lessons in stewardship and civic responsibility. Thank you, Grandmom, for being a positive role model. Wherever you are, your spirit and your legacy live on in your grandchildren.

Harassing Plovers and Other Fun

I finally remembered to take a picture of the road, or 'corridor' as it's more properly called. I finished marking the boundaries to keep vehicles out of the new wetlands and then I moved to the west end of the Fort Pickens area to clean. People are such slobs at the beach! I got less than a mile of the beach cleaned and ended up with a full truck load, after putting much of it in the recycling bin and trash bins in the parking lot... There were toothbrushes, beer cans, gatorade jugs, oil containers, sun glasses, masks and snorkels, a new bottle of ranch dressing (in the strong Florida sun -- yuck!), a full bottle of Thai hotsauce, lots of beach toys, a dozen sneakers, the prop to a small boat, a nose cone (to a plane?) and anything and everything else you can possibly imagine. At least it was a good workout, and the beach looks a little better.

There was a large group of Snowy and Wilson's Plovers near Battery 234. I worry that I harassed them too much as I slowly moved between the surf and the dunes, bobbing up and down as I gathered random bits of plastic. They kept moving, a few feet at time, but they were letting me get really close. I finally went back to the mule for my camera and got a couple of nice shots -- I really wanted one with a snowy looking straight at me, but they didn't oblige. If only they understood English!

Coastal Clean-Up

Yesterday was Coastal Clean Up Day. People from around the world joined together to pick up the trash that litters our beaches, both from the flotsam that comes in on the tides, and the beach visitors that leave their trash behind. One is inevitable, while we continue to use our oceans as dumping grounds; the other is inexcusable irresponsibility.

On the one section of beach I worked with in the National Park, here's what we found:

13,290 beer bottles
32,516 been and soda cans
927 Gatorade/sports drink bottles
12 dish detergent bottles
48 bleach bottles
56 beach chairs (some brand new)
12 plastic porch chairs
3 fishing rods
18 random pieces of foam
128 Styrofoam cups
212 plastic cups
27 lighters
12 cigarette packs (don't even ask about the cigarette butts!)
1,245 gallon jugs
57 beach rafts
96 tires
countless plastic bags
326 balloons
miles of rope and fishing line
3 large (over 100 feet) seine nets
12 cast nets
24 grills (yes, people leave them on the beach after a cook-out, and never return)
13 tents (people come for vacation, buy a Walmart tent and LEAVE IT on the beach!)
214 pairs of shoes, and another 334 single shoes
1 bra
3 bathing suits (I don't want to know what happened there...)
boat and airplane parts
27 milk crates
2 buoys
6 boat bumpers

This beach is unbelievable beautiful -- 7 miles of sugary sand without a building on it once you leave the visitors center (restrooms, pavilions, etc). This end of the island is very narrow at points -- you can stand in the center and see the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay behind you. Maritime forests, still dry and burnt from Hurricanes Ivan, Dennis and Katrina, line the north shore, their scarred skeletal arms reaching for the cloud scudded sky. Sea oats sway in the breeze and catch blowing sand, building up the dunes, and the island, with their extensive root system. Great Blue Herons stalk prey while affecting regal poses along the north shore marshes. Osprey hunt from overhead, grabbing wriggling fish in their talons to feed their young. Silver white light glints from sunlight reflected off the rainbow of fish scales. As the sun scoots behind a cloud, the clear waves flash from blue to green, dissolving in a splash of white foam as they hit the beach. Sanderlings and sandpipers dance to the cadence of the waves, wading with feathered bellies dipping into the sea as they run from the approaching water.

A loon floats ashore to dry off after the long commute from the Maine coast, but this one is fiestier than most, jabbing at me as I try to disentangle the clear fishing line wrapped around it's beak and neck. How can he eat like this? After snipping away the last bit, I back up, and the bird paddles the sand as he escapes back to the rocking waves. Humans are too much trouble. A gull trips along, with a six-pack ring jutting out of it's beak. It's time for the scissors again, and a bird self-defense class. Those bills can hurt!

I can understand fishing line wrapped around a bird -- the line is easy to lose and hard to find once it's dropped. Large fish run with hooks and line all the time. What I don't understand are the thousands of beer cans left behind, some complete with their cardboard carrying case. Someone made the effort to carry that weight down miles of beach, but couldn't be bothered to carry the light aluminum back to a recycling center or trash can.

These are the same people that grab me and ask why I'm not spending my day, everyday, cleaning the beach as I navigate through the park in my uniform. As one of a small group of biologists trying to protect the many endangered species in our park, monitor shore lines and turtle nests, and further our understanding of the on-going hurricane recovery here, I really don't have time. I do clean as much as I can, but only when en-route to addressing my priorities that day. I regret to admit that it makes me angry -- I work hard to protect these beaches for everyone, and I'm not a human trash can. I especially like it when someone approaches me with their empty water bottle, not even bothering to say hello, just holding it out for me to take from them and dispose of. How did we get so rude and presumptuous?

Ok, that's my rant for the day. Now I have to find a truck big enough to haul all those beer bottles to a recycling center. I wanted to take just one of them, write a message, and send it out to sea, hoping someone, somewhere would read the message and learn to love and respect the sea around us as much as I do.