One clear glass bottle, beer type. One bulk salt bag, blue plastic, reading ''Stow it, don't throw it." One bowling ball, with barnacles.
One duffel bag filled with cocaine.
Over the past 10 years, John Miller has collected more than 650,000 pieces of trash from the beaches of Texas's Padre Island National Seashore. The park's 68 miles of toast-colored sand is a legendary spring-break destination–and the collection point for vast amounts of garbage.
Dumping trash in the ocean is largely banned by international treaty, but an estimated 1.9 billion pounds of it still ends up there annually. Even the coast of Antarctica is littered. The solution, scientists and environmentalists agree, is to stop dumping at the source. But identifying the source of countless detergent bottles and truck tires seems impossible. Yet that's exactly what Miller set out to do.
As the park's chief of science, Miller has put together what is arguably the world's best study of one beach's trash. ''There isn't any better," says James Coe, former head of the marine debris program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's more reliable than widely quoted, but unscientific, volunteer surveys from the Center for Marine Conservation. And it's simple enough that communities can use it to trace the source of beach debris.
When the 51-year-old biologist arrived at Padre Island a decade ago, he walked out on the beach and ''was absolutely appalled. I wondered why this was a park." The garbage wasn't just ugly, he knew. It was dangerous. Glass shards, used medical supplies, and barrels of hazardous waste threaten people. Wildlife suffers, too. Researchers have found plastic in the stomachs of half of all dead sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. The turtles, it seems, mistake floating plastic for jellyfish or other favorite foods. Discarded fishing line tears off birds' legs.
At first, Miller sought to escape Padre Island, but when his transfer bid was rejected, the former Vietnam paratrooper decided to fight trash with science. First he took quarterly samples. Then he got funding for a crew of five to pick up trash daily. It was no picnic. On one day, it took Miller and his crew eight hours to clear less than one mile of beach.
Balloons and coke. From 1994 through 1998, for example, he and his crew tabulated and disposed of 274,103 plastic fragments, 19,258 rubber gloves, 13,946 gallon milk jugs, 10,954 balloons, and other detritus, including two bowling balls and a duffel bag containing 43 kilograms of cocaine. Miller then used tide, wind, and fishing fleet data, as well as old-fashioned detective work, to find the culprits.
Sometimes finding the source was easy: Offshore oil platform identification numbers were on many large buoys. But the rubber gloves stumped him for years, until an abandoned shrimp boat washed ashore. On it, he found gloves, as well as other formerly baffling items, such as bulk salt bags and 50-pound onion bags. While Miller is frustrated that he hasn't been able to finger individuals, he now believes that at least 21 percent of Padre Island's trash comes from the gulf shrimping fleet and 12 percent, including pallets and hard hats, from offshore oil rigs. ''It should be simple to get them not to dump their garbage," Miller says. ''This is solvable. "
The chief scientist retired from the park service last week. As his final act, he finished a report identifying alleged polluters. Miller's work also explains how any beach community could use his methods to put together a trash sampling program and use the data to pressure dumpers to stop, or at least share in beach cleanup costs. That's exactly what he plans to do in retirement, even though it will likely prove difficult. The shrimpers have so far dismissed Miller's assertions. Lots of other folks use rubber gloves, bulk salt, and onion bags, says Wilma Anderson, spokesperson for the Texas Shrimp Association. ''We are being used as a scapegoat," she says.
Back on the beach, Miller stops at a piece of driftwood someone has decorated with baby shoes and bottlecaps. Not amused, he says, ''I am tired of looking at garbage."
Just then a squadron of brown pelicans soars silently, magnificently, directly overhead. Miller can't resist cheering: ''Look at that!
Whoooooee!
source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990412/12beac.htm 26jul01
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