Showing posts with label legacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legacy. Show all posts

08 January 2011

Ban Fishing on Crowded Urban Beaches - Marine Reserves

Each year there are fewer Crested Terns visiting Manly Beach.

More and more fishermen line up along the urban beach. Booze-free zone. Stinking garbage, dead fish, dangerous hooks and plastic junk are left behind.
A Crested Tern mother had a chick which she hid amongst the Seagulls. Returning from her feeding trip, she was in distress, trying unsuccessfully to regurgitate - a fishing hook and nylon string. Various phone calls were made to volunteer organisations with long waiting loops. Had it been a precious dog, there would have been a swift service. It is unknown if the dependent chick or the mother survived. But then it's all about beach as a tidy and profitable playground for humans. Wildlife, especially shorebirds, are not granted a habitat.

More birds killed by fishing hooks and fishing lines at Manly Beach

Ban fishing on urban beaches. Make Manly beach and the Northern beaches a marine park.

25 May 2009

Plastic Pellets and Erosion at Manly Beach

Wild weather events have brought forth two unusual phenomena at Manly Beach: erosion and plastic pellet pollution.

Erosion: At the south end , especially near the Life Saving Club the sand has dropped by 110 cm. Large chunks of cement, rusty iron pipes and sandstone are exposed. The stairs' foundations and the old infrastructural stumps have been exposed.

Plastic Pellets: Nurdle (pre-production plastic pellet or plastic resin pellet) are approximately 5mm in diameter, white or discoloured. All of it 'gets lost' in the industrial production and transportation of plastic products. Once in the ocean they become 'mermaid tears'. Many animals at the ocean become sick or die from them. In the end they enter the entire food chain. Additionally they leach plasticizers. They are also a transport medium of toxic chemicals (PCBs, DDE) in the marine environment. In the Great Pacific Garbage Patch giant amounts are in a vortex till the next gyre hurls them in any direction.

The plastic pellets have in the memory of Manly blog never been seen on the beach. There is also a lot of general plastic debris as well all along the beach.

Is there a marine science body responsible to monitor such occurences, or is it all up to the expertise of life savers?
Links:
International Pellet Watch, Global Monitoring of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) using Beached Plastic Resin Pellets.
Plastic Debris, Manly Beach
Coasts eroding, tag, abc