Diving
in for Annual Beach Cleanup
[first
published in Newsday,
September 22, 2002]
Newsday
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Diving in for Annual Beach Cleanup
Sumathi Reddy. STAFF WRITER
They
collected a tire and metal rods, a fisherman's float
and hundreds of cigarette butts, and even a stray bathing
suit bottom.
"Someone's
going to miss that one," a man said, laughing.
The
various odds and ends were among thousands of pounds
of garbage collected, cataloged and weighed at coastal
areas across the state yesterday as part of the American
Littoral Society's 13th annual cleanup effort.
A
handful of scuba divers from the Long Island Divers
Association dived into the waters at Oak Beach in Babylon,
surfacing with old beer bottles and car parts.
Nearby
at Robert Moses State Park, hundreds of school children,
Ocean Conservancy volunteers and others culled together
by the office of state Sen. Owen Johnson (R-West Babylon)
fanned across the beach armed with trash bags, gloves
and clipboards.And at dozens of other beaches, lakes
and bays across Long
Island, different groups came together to pitch in.
The
cleanup was part of a larger international effort organized
through The Ocean Conservancy, said Charles G. Barr,
program manager in the organization's Office of Pollution
Prevention and Monitoring in Virginia."We have
more people cleaning more miles of shoreline and actually
collecting less garbage," he said yesterday at
Robert Moses State Park. "But regardless of whether
it's getting better we're still finding thousands of
pounds of garbage in the span of a few hours. And there's
a human hand behind every piece of trash out there."
Anton
Fig, the drummer on the "Late Show with David Letterman,"
was among the volunteers at Robert Moses State Park
yesterday.
Fig,
who has a vacation home in Montauk, said he loves to
surf and enjoy the ocean so he figured he would come
out and help preserve it.
"It
looks beautiful and pristine," he said, surveying
the beachfront, "and look at all the trash we have,"
he added, pointing to the truck full of garbage bags.
At
Oak Beach, divers plunged into the waters pulling up
everything from car fenders and an engine to lots of
imported beer bottles.
Part
of the Long Island Divers Association's motive this
year was to show Babylon town officials and the people
of Oak Beach what good neighbors they would make. The
association is hoping the town will include a scuba
diving area when it develops the land into a park.
"We
want to show goodwill and hopefully entice them to provide
us access for scuba divers," said Gus Bricker,
president of the association.
