A short while back, I blogged about how some beach
municipalities cut costs while dredging by dumping all the dug up sand onto the
beaches instead of transporting it a minimum of ten miles off shore as they
used to do. Due to how this makes
the beaches unsightly, many are opposed to dredging. As if the unsightly extra tons of sand burying the beaches
aren’t enough to upset the locals, then having to witness the masses of dead
animals caused by the dredging is.
Dredging consists of scraping huge amounts of sand from the
ocean floor and relocating it.
This process kills millions of sea life. For example, following dredging, sand crabs litter the shore
like ribbons of pea gravel. Sea
birds, unable to find enough sand crabs to eat, die by the hundreds. Seals, who usually happily inhabit deeper
waters of the ocean, are also affected by dredging, their corpses littering the
shore as grim reminders of what man’s solution to problems causes.
I realize that dredging serves a purpose. As such, I’m not criticizing those who try
to solve those problems. But one
would think there would be a more humane way—at least for sea life—to solve the
problems dredging addresses.
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