Month: February 2022

Water Safety for Lakes, Rivers, and Beaches  Washington State Department of Health

Miami Beach will ban alcohol sales in the wee hours for two weeks in March after last year’s rowdy Spring Break celebrations led to hundreds of arrests and dozens of gun seizures.

Miami Beach City Commissioners voted Wednesday to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol after 2am between March 7 and March 21 along the city’s entertainment district, commonly referred to as South Beach.

The current last call is 5am for alcohol sales throughout much of the city, according to the Miami Herald.

Commissioner Alex Fernandez said the ruling will ‘ensure a safe environment as we protect the quality of life of our residents in a temporary ordinance.’

On March 20 of last year, Miami Beach imposed an 8pm curfew after multiple violent incidents involving drunk revelers, including one in which ‘a crowd of hundreds of people had formed a mob and began to use tables and chairs as weapons,’ said Police Chief Rick Clements.

‘During March – on either side of St. Patrick’s Day, at the high point of Spring Break – the disorder in our city is intolerable. It’s just that simple,’ said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber on Wednesday. 

Commissioners voted for the latest ruling 4-3 despite pleas from nightclub operators and employees who argued that a ban would cost them money while creating an unfair advantage for clubs, restaurants and hotels in other parts of the city, the Miami Herald reported.

‘It’s just picking winners and losers. It’s wrong,’ said Jimmy Resnick, the landlord for South Beach club Exchange Miami.

‘They have to close at two o’clock. You walk approximately a block and a half and you’re at Mr. Jones – they get to open until 5 o’clock… it’s ludicrous,’ he told CNN. ‘I think that you do it citywide, or you don’t do it at all.’

Other business owners also spoke out against the post-2am alcohol ban during Wednesday’s meeting.

‘Safety is everybody’s priority. Whether you believe in two o’clock, five o’clock – it’s everyone’s priority,’ said David Martinez, one of the owners of the bar Sweet Liberty. 

‘I do not believe that closing at two o’clock is going to remedy anything,’ Martinez said. ‘On the contrary, I think it’s going to allow everybody to empty out into the streets at the same time and cause probably more violence.’ 

Gelber and commissioners favoring the ban said it is necessary to free up police resources and ensure public safety during the height of Spring Break.

Some residents also spoke in favor of the ban. 

Spring Break brought large crowds to Miami Beach last year, and the city enforced an 8pm curfew to cut down on disorder.

‘For the hardship it may deliver, I’m sorry,’ Gelber said. ‘But from our point of view, going through that two-week period … is a danger to the public. It’s a proven danger to the public.’

During one incident last year, a police officer was filmed body-slamming 19-year-old James Harrison, who was ‘inciting the rest of the crowd,’ an officer told WSVN. 

On March 12 of last year, police tried to break up a disorderly crowd of at least 200 near Eighth Street and Ocean Drive. 

The crowd then surrounded the officers, who deployed pepper spray.

Miami Beach imposed an 8pm curfew to deal with the violence, which coincided with a COVID-19 surge in Florida. 

‘We’ve done everything we can to try and mitigate the behavior we’re seeing,’ Clements, the police chief, said at the time, recalling a separate incident in which a crowd of hundreds of people turned into a violent mob that threw tables and chairs at each other.

‘Property was destroyed,’ the police chief said. ‘Then last night, we had three more (similar incidents).’ 

Bars and businesses were ordered closed by 8pm. Sidewalk cafés had to close by 7pm, and the McArthur, Venetian and Julia Tuttle causeways leading into the barrier island that is Miami Beach were closed from 9pm to 5am. 

The curfew wasn’t lifted until April 6, according to WTVJ. 

Amid the ugly scenes last year, there were fears that maskless students and other party-goers would spark a rise in Florida’s COVID cases.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said: ‘We’re seeing too much Spring Break activity.

‘We’ve got a problem with too many people coming here. We’ve got a problem with too many people coming here to let loose.’ 

At the time, nearly 70 colleges and universities in the US had changed schedules to eliminate weeklong spring breaks.

Some schools gave students a week off and encouraged ‘staycations’ on campus, but many ignored the advice.    

On March 12 alone, 120 people on South Beach were arrested and cops seized guns and drugs.

After the curfew was put in place, several hundred Spring Breakers were seen gathering to dance and drink along Ocean Drive, but the majority scattered when police arrived minutes after the curfew went into effect. 

The Environmental Protection Ministry said Wednesday afternoon that it did not detect any oil in a suspicious stain off the coast of Israel, but that it would continue to monitor the situation.

“The findings in the field at this time, which ruled out the presence of oil or its derivatives, were presented in the assessment of the situation,” said the ministry, leading to a decision by Environment Minister Tamar Zandberg to shut down what had previously been designated a “tier-3” national incident.

Zandberg said that all ships and other marine vessels involved in investigating the incident would be returned to shore, but that the situation would be continually monitored and that inspectors would be deployed along the coast on Thursday.

“Throughout the day and in intensive scans at sea, so far no findings have been found indicating oil pollution at sea,” she said in a statement. “However, we will continue to be vigilant… we are careful and prepare for the worst, and yet hope for the best.”

Zandberg said that full lab tests conducted on the affected seawater would not be complete for several days.

The R/V Bat-Galim deep-sea research ship, jointly operated by the ministry and the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute, took samples on Wednesday and sprayed dispersants into the water.

“Suspicious stains” on the surface of the sea 20 to 40 kilometers (12-24 miles) from the shore along a stretch of coast between the central cities of Rishon Lezion and Netanya were first discovered late Tuesday evening.

At the time, Zandberg warned that the suspected oil spill had the potential to become a national or regional pollution incident.

On Wednesday evening, the minister said she was glad she had acted “quickly and treated the event as a national incident,” despite ultimately ruling out the danger of an oil spill. She praised the quick action and cooperation of the ministry with the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Police, Nature and Parks Authority and a variety of environmental nonprofits and private sector actors.

“We received many inquiries from volunteers who already wanted to get to the beaches and were prepared for cleaning,” said Zandberg. “Fortunately, this time we did not need their help, but it warms my heart to see the spirit of volunteering.”

The incident this week came almost exactly a year after the country suffered one of its worst environmental disasters.

Israel was taken by surprise on February 18, 2021, when massive amounts of tar began washing onto its coastline following an oil spill in stormy weather, along with the corpse of a fin whale some 17 meters (55 feet) long.

Over the following days, it became clear that beaches all along Israel’s Mediterranean coast had been contaminated and that wildlife had paid a heavy price.

In the wake of that leak, the sale of Mediterranean fish was temporarily suspended and beaches were closed. Thousands of volunteers rallied to help with the cleanup. The long-term damage to ecosystems still remains to be seen.

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Nicholas Hodgson shares how a personal crusade against litter resulted in ‘Trash Tuesdays’, an environmental initiative with ever-growing appeal. The article was runner-up in the 2021 Brian Black Memorial Award for marine environmental journalism

Homo sapiens have survived to become the dominant species on earth not by spotting the similarities in a landscape, but by taking note of the differences, writes Nicholas Hodgson.

Early man would not have survived on the plains of Africa had he not been able to spot a leopard camouflaged in the grass.

One afternoon during our 2017 sailing season in Greece, we anchored in a beautiful cove near Russian Bay on the island of Poros.

As we sat looking out over the landscape, my eyes were drawn to all the rubbish caught in the rocks.

I was bothered that our view was spoiled and. that such a beautiful cove was marred by human carelessness and indifference. I had spotted my ‘leopard’ and a journey began
that I had never expected to take.

I popped our SUP into the water, took a few big blue bin bags with me and paddled to shore.

Within minutes, I had cleaned up the little cove and filled a couple of the bags with plastic water bottles and bits of white polystyrene, as well as pieces of rope, fishing nets, lids and a plastic flip-flop.

When I returned to Lady Roslyn, our Saba 50 sailing catamaran, I sat down with my wife, Catherine, and discussed how much better the cove looked, how much better I felt about having done something to help the environment and how we should draw attention to the issue of plastic trash washed up on the shores of the areas we were visiting.

As we continued our voyage across the Cyclades that summer, cleaning coves and anchorages as we went, I began posting pictures and blogposts to our Lady Roslyn website and Facebook page, and a very simple idea began to take shape.

Clean the plastic trash from the coves and beaches where we are anchored and post images to social media. Encourage other sailors to do the same, so that as a group we are ‘paying it forward’ for one another, and the anchorages we love to visit will be known to be free of trash.

Understand and accept that individually, we will make no lasting positive impact on the marine environment, but collectively only 1,000 sailors picking up one bag of trash and posting about it over a 20-week sailing season would amount to 20,000 bags of plastic trash removed from the marine environment in a season.

This would not be a grand design to clean the oceans of all plastic, but a ‘butterfly effect’ initiative, through which a group of like-minded individuals could make a real impact for themselves, for other sailors and for the environment.

The challenge was, and is, how to promote, encourage, cajole and incentivise sailors and charterers to get involved.

What is clear to me is that around the Mediterranean coast, governments and local authorities do not and will not, in the foreseeable future, have the ability to clean up the coastlines.

If the sailing community wish to continue to enjoy beautiful surroundings, we will have to do something about it ourselves.

It is this challenge that has occupied the last five years of our sailing lives.

Trash Tuesdays launches

We created the Trash Tuesdays Facebook group, where sailors anywhere in the world can post about their clean-ups.

They are encouraged to post on a Tuesday so that ‘trash fatigue’ does not set in. ‘Trash Tuesdays’ has been adopted by the Facebook Med Sailing group, Catamaran Sailing group, Sailing the Lycian Coast of Turkey group and Fountaine Pajot Catamaran group, all of which actively encourage posts.

Collectively, there are currently 38,360 members of these groups.

Our next challenge is to encourage charter companies, marinas and coastal hotels to get involved by promoting plastic trash clean-ups by their charter clients, liveaboards and guests.

It requires some creative thinking using imaginative ways to encourage visitors to an area to pick up trash while they are on holiday.

While sailing along the Kassandra Peninsula in northern Greece in July 2019, we berthed for three nights at the beautiful and luxurious Sani Marina and Resort.

Running northwards from the edge of the resort is beautiful Bousoulas beach, a 4km-long stretch of soft white sand.

On one side is the turquoise water of the Aegean and on the other, the beautiful forest and Sani Wetland, home to more than 200 species of birds, some of which are rare and endangered.

It was such a beautiful day that I decided to go for a run along the beach.

Once you are past the beach bar and umbrellas, which are located at one end of the beach, there is only white sand stretching in front of you as far as the eye can see.

Because the sand at the water’s edge was a bit soft in places, I found myself zigzagging back and forth across the beach, alternating between the water’s edge and the low dunes, looking for firmness underfoot.

That’s when I began noticing plastic bottle caps dotted along my path, scattered like pebbles by Hansel, from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel.

Bottle tops strewn like confetti

At the far end of the beach where I stopped to catch my breath, I turned around and saw a bottle cap at my feet.

I bent down to pick it up and put it in the back pocket of my running shorts, and that moment was the end of my run and the beginning of my ‘quest’.

I started picking up the caps as I walked. Within metres my pocket was full, so I took off my running hat and started filling it with the caps.

I looked up and, knowing that the resort was 4km away, wondered how many caps I could pick up on the return leg.

Very soon my running hat was full and I had nothing else to carry all the caps in, so I took off my running shirt and tied a knot in the arms and neck to make a bag.

I transferred all the plastic caps into my new ‘bag’ and put my hat back on.

It took me more than two hours to meander back and forth along the beach, and the shirt ‘bag’ kept getting fuller.

By the time I reached the umbrellas at the end of the beach, my back was breaking from bending over and my heart was aching for the planet.

We humans have chosen convenience over our conscience, and huge companies seem to have placed profits before the planet.

When I reached down to pick up my 500th screw-top bottle cap, I put it into the back pocket of my shorts to remind myself that, in my view, big corporates need to be held accountable for this environmental travesty.

Continues below…

With the world facing a diabetes epidemic it is no wonder that drinks companies are branching out and aggressively producing and promoting bottled water.

It is the GIANT elephant in the room. If these firms are forced or persuaded to do something to find solutions to this mess, all the other smaller producers will also fall in line.

It’s no longer good enough to hide behind the mantra that it is ‘the consumer’s responsibility to dispose of the plastic once purchased’.

Of course, consumers must take responsibility for their actions, but it seems to me the planet can no longer stand the promotion of rampant consumerism and convenience without holding
the profit makers to account.

So, how many plastic bottle caps did I pick up in the end? 668! Let that number sink in.

One randomly chosen beach in a corner of Greece, with one cap lying on it for every five steps taken. I bent over 668 times to pick up a cap.

That means 668 people chose to throw away a bottle or the cap without thinking, resulting in 668 pieces of plastic that could easily end up in a bird’s stomach.

However, 668 caps are no longer on that beach. I do, at least, take heart from knowing that.

The indicator cove

In July of 2018 we anchored in a very beautiful cove just off Gemiler Adasi, along the Lycian Coast of Turkey.

After anchoring and setting the two stern lines ashore, we could not help but notice all the plastic trash caught in the cove.

Setting off on SUPs, it took four of us well over an hour to collect a number of trash bags full of plastic. Catherine and I returned in July 2021.

While preparing to anchor, I wondered how we might find this special little cove, which often attracts turtles to its turquoise waters.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find that after three years away it took me 45 minutes to collect only one full bag of plastic trash.

The cove is now once again completely free of plastic rubbish.

While there were the usual culprits of well-known fizzy drinks bottles and caps and multiple empty plastic water bottles, the real concern for me is the huge increase in microplastic scum on the surface of the water.

The white polystyrene fish crates, thin plastic bags and sheet plastic break down easily under the sun’s UV rays.

How to capture those items will be food for thought for me this season.

Sharing the Trash Tuesdays love

Just as the small cove at Gemiler Adasi gives me hope that bays and beaches that are cleaned can remain relatively clear of plastic for an extended period, so is the fact that many of the anchorages we have stopped at during the last six years of cruising in the Mediterranean have been found to be completely clear of plastic trash.

This is good news. However, we cannot be complacent.

Yachting is becoming ever more popular and I believe that the shock of COVID-19 has prompted many people to act on their dreams of sailing to distant shores.

It is very easy to become despondent when we see all this rubbish, but I believe that if we all make an effort to clean the anchorages we visit, we make the stay more pleasant for ourselves while paying it forward for others who will visit there after us.

It’s a virtuous circle: what benefits me benefits my fellow man, and benefits the marine environment. Next time you anchor in a beautiful cove see if you can spot the leopard in the grass…

Visit the Trash Tuesdays Facebook page here

Read about the Trash Tuesdays initiative here

Brian Black Memorial Award sponsored by B&G

Brian Black, a television journalist and lifelong sailor and contributor to Yachting Monthly, was as passionate about the marine environment as he was eloquent in his writing and filmmaking about the crises facing fragile Arctic ecosystems.

His wife Lesley was a sailor and author in her own right, becoming Northern Ireland’s first female yacht club commodore.

As a memorial to Brian and Lesley Black, the Black family, in conjunction with YM, established an award to celebrate sailing adventures which shed a fresh light on marine environmental issues through inspiring journalism.

The award aims to recognise the very best writing about the marine environment that brings a new perspective to readers.

The award is sponsored by marine electronics company B&G, which recognises sustainability as one of the pillars of its multi-year strategy.

B&G’s sustainability agenda includes: removing all single- use plastics from its packaging and using only recyclable materials from this year; reducing company air travel by 90%; reducing paper used in their offices by 95%; and decreasing energy consumption for IT equipment from 305,000kWh to 250,000kWh.

It is also working with sister company C-Map to open up their BioBase platform, which processes, maps and stores spatial aquatic data free of charge to government bodies and research institutes, to support aquatic conservation. www.bandg.com

For more details on the Brian Black Memorial Award visit: www.yachtingmonthly.com/brianblack

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