Service Learning: Horseshoe Island

Friday, March 5 Afternoon Activity
Post by: Samantha Busiello

This afternoon we finished our marine debris recovery program, by restoring the Western side of Horseshoe Island. Like we did before, we made our way over to the Island by canoe and kayak and then hugged the mangrove shoreline collecting debris. All of the marine debris that we collected was brought back to the camp and loaded in a dumpster to be properly disposed of. As we had before, we measured the length of the shoreline that we cleaned - this was our transect, and tried to classify the type of garbage recovered.

Jocelyn and I took on the task of measuring the shoreline. We split the contour into sections that we measured, angling in at each bend and dip to try to get an accurate measurement. The measurements that we took ranged for each section from 6 meters to 58 meters, depending on how easy it was to follow the contour of the shoreline being processed (We will be collating the data tonight from this lab).

We were all surprised by the amount of garbage that we recovered, completely filling three canoes (the boats had to be walked across the bight). It does not seem right that this amount of garbage should be on such a small island. We found a tire, planks of construction lumber, fishing rope (not as much as before), shoes, a baby doll arm, old bottles, a cooler, plastic bags, pieces of styrofoam, old buoy markers and cans. We also found the bones and plate of a hawksbill turtle that had washed up on the Island. However, because this a protected species we were not allowed to remove the bones from the island. This activity was just right for us, as we all had such an extraordinary amount of energy: It felt good to be so active while doing good!
I must say we should all sleep well tonight (and they did!).