I am a member of the Narragansett Pier SportFishing Association. Every year the NPSFA goes out in the spring and conducts a cleanup in conjunction with many other clubs and organizations. I was amazed at some of the junk I found on the beach (a high percentage was actually lobster traps and gear). Whole TONS of junk/trash/crap were picked up from those areas to the point a backhoe was needed to get just the trash the NPSFA had collected:
Quote:
The clean-up on April 21 celebrating Earth Day was very successful with approximately 25
participants cleaning up the Point Judith, Black Point, and Middlebridge areas, reports Marty Wencek, Conservation Committee Chairman. A huge pile of trash and debris was consolidated at the Black Point access parking lot and was hauled away by DEM. I'm told that they had to call in a backhoe to
lift some of the trash on to their truck! Our efforts were captured on video by our own Don Pedro and acknowledged by the town of Narragansett Conservation Commission. A fine bar-b-que back
at Maridee Tackle rounded out a great day. A great big thank you to all the volunteers. Marty would also like to especially thank Ralph Fox, who constructed trash picker sticks, George
Palmerscanio, who picked up and delivered the trash bags, gloves, and water bottles from DEM to Maridee Tackle, Captain Andy DeAngels for the use of the tackle shop as our base, and John Kennedy and Harry Yackey for the use of their pick-up trucks. Thank you again to everyone for a job welll done. Our shoreline is that much more pleasing due to this effort.
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Other clubs like West Bay Anglers (many beaches) and Mass Beach Buggy (many beaches) and Mass Striped Bass (several herring runs) also have events to cleanup various locations - but all of these efforts have been negated after a short period of time because people generally don't care.
I've noticed that many "hacks" just show no regard to their surroundings or the results of their mess. This isn't just a problem with people that fish (I will not call these people anglers as having a rod & reel doesn't exactly qualify someone as an angler) but also most every segment of the population that boards a boat or walks a beach.
I also see that some B&Ts that tend to cater to these hacks don't push enough the need of keeping these places clean. I don't want to insinuate that it's their responsibility BUT as they are generally the only people in contact with these "hacks", those shops may be the only OPPORTUNITY to get this word out. Especially to the people that are just getting into fishing. Also, they don't push circle hooks as much as they could either (which is odd because, besides the fact that the fish will benefit (IF - BIG IF - they get released), they'll also sell just a little more product...
Denis - I wouldn't single out any one particular group because I've seen every type of person from the one that doesn't speak a lick of english (willingly or not) to some corporate CEOs that don't give a rats arse to their surroundings or the ramifications of their actions. It's very sickening.
Fishpart and I were talking about this Friday night when he said that the URI dock had been gated off due to the lack of consideration of people - mainly fishers - leaving trash and generally disrespecting the Campus and surroundings. Some of you may remember from last year that there was considerable talk of closing this access. People from here as well as other groups contacted URI and may have helped influence (or may not) keeping the dock open to the general public. See, in addition to the typical trash and old bait being left right up on the dock, they were also finding human feeces ON THE DOCK. They were on the fence of keeping the access available (which I think they genuinely wanted) or closing it because of the deploreable conditions the public was leaving the dock in. Well, you guessed it, they were nice and kept the dock open until all but this year was no better and it sounds like they shut it down.
Go figure, eh?