Plastic is forever

Those of you who know me and know the Boston Harbor Islands know that Peddocks Island is a favorite overnight anchorage for LIQUIDITY. It’s just five miles from my Marina Bay, worlds away from the city and has one of the best sea glass beaches I’ve ever seen.

Sadly though, tide and current also make Peddocks a magnet for pretty much anything in Boston harbor that floats. The debris line, as observed over Mothers’ Day weekend, included detergent bottles, sneakers, flip flops, water bottles, bottle caps, milk crates, plastic bags, polyethylene line, cigarette lighters and more. Absent human intervention to remove the plastic, it’s there forever.

My view of Peddocks Island came just a short time after spending my second annual volunteer week sailing and teaching about the environment on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and so I’m sensitized to both visible and invisible pollution. On Clearwater, it was commonplace for the Captain to grab the boat hook to retrieve what he might, as we sailed and/or the trash drifted by. We might do the same, doing our very little bit to save the planet and perhaps using the exercise as a crew-overboard drill of sorts. 

Fair winds.