Diamond-shaped Bite Marks by Juvenile Sea Turtles, Mustang Island State Park, Corpus Christi, Texas June 2019

After the hatchling release last weekend, Lindy and I strolled down the Padre Island National Seashore (PINS). We enjoyed the cloud cover and cooler weather but we weren’t purposeless, instead we gathered trash along the beach. By the end of our three mile jaunt, we filled two twenty gallon bags and hauled off armloads of larger debris. It should come as no surprise that the majority of the items we picked up were plastic.

A survey published in 2018 found that Texas beaches have ten times the plastic trash of other gulf coast states (primarily due to the flow of currents in the Gulf of Mexico). It went on to state that Texas leads the nation in marine debris (and that’s saying something considering the waves of trash that washed ashore in the Pacific Northwest after the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami). Note: the study began with NOAA’s hands-on assessments in 2010 and ran through 2015, but it also utilized over 30 years of data accumulated by the Ocean Conservancy.

We felt good about our effort that morning, even though we knew the next high tide would deposit yet another load of trash. When I get disheartened I remind myself that every little bit helps…