Photo of the Day
September 27 – Mexico
A clean wake? “My wife and I spent
four months on our shakedown cruise along the Pacific Coast of
Baja, up to La Paz, and on to San Carlos where we left our boat
for the summer,” write Jackie and Steven Gloor of the San
Diego-based Moonshadow. “We had a great time and
met a lot of wonderful people – cruisers and locals – along the
way.
“What we saw of trash disposal bothered
us quite a bit, however. On almost every beach we found trash
in various forms: glass bottles, plastic, empty motor oil containers,
and so forth. Fishermen, who stay in camps nearby, leave much
of this trash behind. We assume it was their trash because the
amount of trash increases drastically the closer you get to any
fish camp. However, as the enclosed photo shows, there are many
sites where cruisers clearly have attempted to burn their trash,
not realizing that tin cans and glass bottles don’t burn. This
accompanying photo, for example, was taken right next to the
‘cruisers’ shrine’ at Ensenada San Juanico. This trash had to
be brought there by cruisers since there is not a single fish
camp anywhere nearby, and there is no road leading to the shrine.
We found evidence like this in other places, such as on Isla
San Francisco, as well.
Photo Courtesy Moonshadow
“We follow the trash procedures we
learned at several cruising seminars we attended. The first rule
to follow is ‘try to produce as little trash as possible’. We
leave all packing materials not required at the dock before we
leave. All recyclable trash is compacted and separated from burnable
trash. If we are anchored out for an extended period, we do burn
our trash on the beach. We do this by digging a hole below the
high tide line, starting a fire with driftwood, and then slowly
adding trash to the fire until all has turned to ashes. In most
cases we clean the beach of any plastic in the process as well.
After we’re done, we cover the small pile of ashes we created
and let nature take over. We hope all cruisers follow these simple
steps.”
Latitude 38’s
policy comes from the Caribbean, where the motto is: Take only
photographs, leave only footprints. We don’t think the burned
cans – which could easily be bagged and taken back for proper
disposal – count as footprints.
By the way, if anybody knows of such piles
of garbage on the islands between La Paz and Isla San Francisco,
and their exact location, we’d like to know about them. We’re
planning to visit these islands immediately after the Ha-Ha with
Profligate, and would have the space aboard on which to
bring such trash back to La Paz for proper disposal.
|
