STARTING ON THURSDAY MORNING - the sign in/out/ scheduling book, vest, IDs, and information books to be permanently located in the lobby of the Navarre Beach Firehouse! This is open 24 hours a day, and is centrally located on Utility Road, on the North Side of the beach road, between walk-over 6 and 7.
For those of you volunteering today, Wednesday the 14th, the information, sign in/out/scheduling book, etc will all be located in the Utility building NEXT door to the firehouse.
Now for something completely different. We have a pair of volunteers, John and Dyna Kohler, who sent in a great story of their adventures on the beach. They decided to spend their vacation, yes, their VACATION, helping us on our beach! Doesn't that rock? Pop back later today for their story!
They learned the hard way that some people seem to wake up in the morning with sand in their knickers, and nothing you say will make them happy. She did a great job of deflecting the situation and moved on with her day.
Today is going to be another scorcher! Heat Indexes around 105+. So find shade, and drink that water ! Now that the winds are dying down and the tidal range is starting to lower, rip tides should ease up. Keep informing guests about them though!Knowledge is power.
If we're lucky, some afternoon rain will pop up, bringing shade happy clouds.
=========== The copy and paste wasn't working this morning, so I had to re-type this in. I hope I got it all.
Volunteering on the Beach - by Dyna Kohler
My husband and I wanted to volunteer on the coast. Like everyone, we were heartbroken by the Gulf oil spill and the ongoing problem in bringing it under control. We wanted to do our part to help in some way.
Since my husband, John, is from Pensacola, we decided to find an opportunity somewhere near there. He called quite a few volander organizations. I'd been expecting and more than willing to help with clean-up, but we found that clean-up was being handled by local folks whose jobs had been affected by the loss of tourism, so we certainly didn't want to take any jobs away.
Finally John talked to Chris Verlinde of S.U.R.F. ( Shoreline Users Resource Force), a volunteer group in Santa Rosa County. at Navarre Beach. They were just starting up and we were able to come down for a 3 hour Friday training session. The training made use of information from NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), Florida Fish and Wildlife and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. We are not novices to coastal wildlife. John grew up spending much time crabbing, scalloping, mullet fishing and was very close to the oyster men side of his family. In recent years we'd spent more time on the Atlantic and have see, for example, loggerhead turtles nesting, hatchlings trying to make their way to the sea, etc.
We were happy to study the materials to be ready to answer question in a balanced fact-based view of the situation. There were crews there to collect up the tar-balls and others monitoring the wildlife. Our job was to answer questions for the visitors to the beach.
My first day, since oil was not immediately present in Navarre, I pondered how to approach the job. On this first day, I chose to focus on the sea turtles that were nesting along the shore. The county has a "Leave No Trace" ordinance. People are being asked to remove all beach furniture and other items from the beach each night. There are several turtle nests along Navarre Beach and since this is turtle nesting season, more may be expected. Beach chairs, etc. serve as barriers which confuse them, and the giant cumbersome bodies are unable to back up. Artificial lights like flashlights or porch lights can also confuse the turtle looking for moonlight glowing on the water to know how to get back to the water.
My first entree was a beach float blowing along the beach and landing next to one of the turtle nests. I picked it up and went to locate the owner. The owners had apparently gone inside, so I started talking to people about the beach items and the turtle nests.
Most people were very happy to learn about the sea turtles and were more than happy to help by removing their beach chairs etc. However, at one point I had become so eager to talk about the sea turtles that I added "I'm thinking that maybe there will be more turtle nests here as turtles try to escape the oil." ( I considered this a hopeful thing, but I found later it was probably not true, as they tend to go back to where they were hatched and also studies have found those in the wild do not necessarily avoid the oil. ) A gentleman sitting next to me, facing away from me said," Do you know that?"
And I said, "No, I said I was only thinking it might be the case."
He said, " I HATE you people!"
I was truly puzzled, "What people are you talking about?"
"You're an ENVIRONMENTALIST, aren't you?"
"Is that a bad thing?"
"You make things cost more. You think people should DIE and turtles should live!"
"No, that's not true, we just share the same globe, and...."
But he would have none of it. He was so livid, all I could say was, "I'm sorry you feel that way." He managed to eke out, " I'm sorry you feel the way you do."
No one else in his group spoke on either side, but they did agree they would take in their beach items at night.
Did he know someone who had died due to and environmentalist or a sea turtle? That was pretty hard to picture. Was he saying that taking in their beach canopy would kill them? They all seemed fit and there were lots of them, so that also was hard to picture. I had told them I was a volunteer, so I was not costing anyone anything.
The real issue of course is this: Does he not understand that the health of the natural world has a direct impact on the air, water, and food supply of humans? If someone is not paying attention to our impacts on the health of the natural world, then none of us is safe. Scientists, professional environmentalists, who study the natural world learn how species we depend on for food interconnect with other species and habitats that we might not ourselves have considered important. For example, according to NOAA ,
"Ninety-seven percent (by weight) of the commercial fish and shellfish landings from the Gulf of Mexico are species that depend on estuaries and their wetlands at some point in their life cycle. Landings from the coastal zone in Louisiana alone make up nearly one-third (by weight) of the fish harvested in the entire continental United States."
Perhaps this fellow doesn't consider nesting sea turtles important, but the oil was freely gushing at that moment as the oil well cap was being replaced, and winds were coming East towards us. We need to do everything we can in these critical first months to keep the natural world as clean as possible to help overcome the damage already done. We all hope for the best.
Most likely, the guy who vented at me had something going on in his own mind and life that had nothing to do with the environmentalists and he just needed someone to lash out at. Of course there are people who make their living telling angry guys like that who they should hate. I don't appreciate such people, regardless of their politics or religion. Hate kills humans just as surely as would disruption of the food supply.
Let's hope that his venting let out some steam and that in cooler moments he will look at life with a more rational and balanced and collaborative and hopeful view and recognize that we all share this natural world and we humans all depend on its health.
And he is right that we need to be careful to to exaggerate or act as experts about thing we do not know, though I thought that I had made it clear it was pure speculation on my part.
Anyway, look out for those sea turtles and any humans who have died taking their beach umbrellas in!
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