As the weather warms up, our beaches become more crowded and a lot more littered. It is common for beaches and our oceans to be contaminated with harmful waste, carelessly left to pollute our beaches.
So to prevent this, AP environmental science teacher Mr. Scott Randles contributed a list of do’s and don’ts.
Rampage: What can we do to help preserve our beaches and become more eco-friendly?
Randles: A lot of what affects beaches in Southern California is what happens up here, in Temple City, so things you put on your lawn like fertilizers, dog poop, pesticides, oil, all these things, will washout when it rains through our washways like the San Gabriel River, salt concrete and everything this gets carried out to sea, so especially after rain storms is when it become the most contaminated.
If we can eliminate putting those things getting into situations where they’ll run off, that will help the health of our local oceans.
Rampage: Over the years, what has happened to our beaches?
Randles: All that stuff the gets washed in there, particularly plastic things float, so they end up getting deposited on beaches.
There’s and island in the Caribbean, there is a ring of plastic all the way around the whole island, right up where the high tide comes up. I have a picture of a hermit crab, and hermit crabs they grow and they get bigger and bigger shells and I have a picture of a hermit crab with a bottle cap instead of a shell. The picture shows how we are impacting wildlife. Beaches are just an on land reflection of what is actually happening further out.
Rampage: What can we do at home or school to protect sea animals?
Randles: Chemical contaminants, those solvents, and paints, make sure they’re secured and they don’t get into the streams because those things definitely impact. Make sure you cut your bottle rings and your from plastic and make sure your plastic gets into the recycling bin, if you have that. Its a good thing our city is our stuff gets recycled.