Saturday, September 19th - Waties Island Beach Sweep

Waties Island Sea Turtle Monitoring Program along with the CCU Sea Turtle Club participated in the state wide Beach/River Sweep sponsored by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium and trash collected will be reported back to the Ocean Conservancy.

We had four of our Leads, Leslie, Sharon, Kim and  Melissa that supplied transportation and supervision over our thirteen guest students.  We were joined by property owner Ms Jackie Boyce.

 

We had a lovely time with the CSTC young ladies.  We had the young ladies along with Kim and Sharon walk the lower end to pick up trash.

 

 

 

Leslie with Melissa, Jackie and another group of ladies moved up to the long end of the island.  We moved the burned wood that I think is part of a dock, higher up on the dune.  I will pick up at a later date to dispose of this eye sore - lots of nails and big bolts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We moved up toward the jetty and found the "big white box" and between myself and Melissa with our young helpers dug this up and was able to get a tow rope on it and it was moved up on the dunes.  Again, to be disposed of at a later date, but at least it will not wash back out to the ocean or become a driving hazard.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were thrilled to see the horses out on the beach.  Since many of our young ladies stated this was there first visit, we loaded everyone up in my truck and drove up to the jetty so they could see the entire island .

 

  

 

 When we returned to the shed we did the trash inventory - just the normal,  balloons, balloon ribbons, lots of bottle caps, plastic bottles, food wrappers, etc.  The strangest thing picked up was some type of marine light fixture.  Our volunteers do a really good job picking up the trash from the beach, since when we consolidated the trash it was just one big bag of trash.

Thankfully, the sun hid behind the clouds for a good part of the morning but we still had high humidity.

Again - good job everyone!

Pictures by Leslie and Melissa, narrative Leslie

All sea turtle monitoring by the Waties Island Sea Turtle Monitoring Program is permitted and authorized by SCDNR under Permit MTP500.