Beach cleaning
Beach cleaning or clean-up is the process of removing solid litter, dense chemicals, and organic debris deposited on a beach or coastline by the tide, local visitors, or tourists. Humans pollute beaches with materials such as plastic bottles and bags, plastic straws, fishing gear, cigarette filters, six-pack rings, surgical masks and many other items that often lead to environmental degradation. Every year hundreds of thousands of volunteers comb beaches and coastlines around the world to clean this debris. These materials are also called "marine debris" or "marine pollution" and their quantity has been increasing due to anthropocentric activities.
There are some major sources of beach debris such as beach users, oceans, sea drifts, and river flow. Many beach users leave their litter behind on the beaches after activities. Also, marine debris or chemicals such as raw oil drift from oceans or seas and accumulate on beaches. Additionally, many rivers bring some cities' trashes to beaches. These pollutants harm marine life and ecology, human health, and coastal tourism. Hartley et al.'s study shows that environmental education is important to eliminate many beach pollutants on beaches and the marine environment.
Marine debris
There are two causes of the degradation of marine ecology and marine debris: the direct forces and proximity forces. We can think of the direct forces as underlying causes of why we consume an excessive amount of goods by industry process. The excessive consumption of goods causes marine debris because the goods have been packaged by manufactured cheap non-recycle materials such as plastic. Solid waste plastics cannot decompose easily in nature and their decomposition process takes thousands of years to million years but plastic breaks down into continuously smaller pieces forming that is called micro-plastics. Thus, such solid waste products are called marine debris that can be seen all through coastlines and on many beaches through the world. There can be many sources of marine debris such as land-based, marine-based, and other anthropocentric activities.Million tons of land-based waste products such as plastics, papers, woods, and metals end up in seas, oceans, and beaches through the wind, oceans currents, sewage, runoff, storm-water drains and rivers. Massive amount of marine debris has become a severe menace to the marine environment, aquatic life and humankind. Most land-based sources are illegal dumping, landfills, and petrochemical and other industry disposals. Also, other marine-based sources originate from anthropocentric marine activities that are drifted fishing lines, nets, plastic ropes or other petrochemical products from remote islands or lands, shipping vessels or fishing boats by wind and oceanic currents. Marine debris source is also anthropocentric activities of local populations such as beach goers, tourists and city or town sewage.
Montesinos et al., study of the total amount of 16,123 beach litter items to determine the source of marine debris at 40 bathing areas along the coast of Cádiz, Spain. The study displays that the sources of 88.5% of plastics, 67% cigarette butts, and cloth litters are related to the activity of beach-goers and tourists, 5.5% of cotton swabs, wet wipes, sanitary towels, tampons, and condoms are related to wastewater discharges at places close to rivers and tidal creeks mouths. Besides, the sources of 2.1% fishing lines, nets, and 0.6% Styrofoam are related to fishing activities and marine sources. Besides, some marine debris indicates that they are dumped directly by some international ships or by tourists into the sea on the beach from different countries such as hard food container, a bottle cap, a cleaner bottle, a food wrapper and other items related to navigation. Montesinos et al.'s study demonstrate that some marine debris can travel hundreds of kilometers and end up very far from its source because of the ocean and sea currents.
Also, tropical and subtropical islands are marine pollution hot spots as their relatively vulnerable ecosystems are being severely affected by both local and foreign marine debris. de Scisciolo et al. study on ten beaches along the leeward and windward coastlines of Aruba that is one of the Lesser Antilles islands located in the Southern Caribbean Sea. They try to determine differences of marine debris in macro, meso-debris and micro-debris densities. The result of their study shows that meso-debris which are rounded plastic products are found on the windward coastlines because the windward coastlines experience higher pressure from distal marine-based debris. Natural factors such as wind and oceanic currents cause the accumulation and distribution of plastic meso-debris to windward coastlines. And macro-debris that contains a larger proportion of originating from eating, drinking and smoking and recreational activities are found leeward sites of the island because the leeward sites experience higher pressures from local land-based debris such as plastic plates, bottles and plastic straws.
Ghost gear
Marine debris consists of millions of tons of abandoned plastic fishing gear. Nearly 640,000 tons of plastic gear is dumped or abandoned in the oceans every year. According to Unger and Harrison, 6.4 tons of pollutant dumps the oceans every year, and the most of them are consist of by durable synthetic fishing gear, packaging, materials, raw plastic, and convenience items. Such extremely durable plastic gear cannot decompose in the seawater and marine environment and they wash up on beaches driven by inshore currents and wind. Such discarded gear such as plastic fishing lines, nets, and floats are called "ghost gear". About 46% of the 79 thousand of ghost gear that is the size of many football fields has been found at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch constituted in 2018. The discarded fishing nets and lines kill or inflict myriad marine animals such as fish, sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, seals, and marine birds every year. And about 30% of fishing populations have been declining and %70 other marine animals suffer by abandoned gear each year. Besides, the huge fishing industry is an important driver of declines marine ecology by overfishing activities. Overfishing causes when big fishing vessels catch tons of fish faster than stock refills. Moreover, overfishing impacts 4.5 billion people who depend on at least 15% of fish for protein, and fishing is the principal livelihood.Benefits
Public health
Clean beaches have many benefits for human health because the polluted beaches imperil human lives by beach accidents. Many items left on beaches such as broken glasses, sharp metals, or hard plastics may injure beach-goers physically. Also, marine debris such as fishing gear or nets may risk human life on the beaches. Such pollutants may be a trap for beach users and cause very serious injuries or drowning accidents for tourists.Ecology
Researches on marine debris have substantially increased our knowledge of the amount and composition of marine debris as well as its impacts on the marine environment, aquatic life and people. Marine debris is very harmful to marine organisms such as plants, invertebrates, fish, seabirds, sea turtles and other large marine mammals. Marine debris contains plastic liters that are composed of industrial chemicals or toxins. These chemicals can be destructive to aquatic organisms because toxins accumulate in the tissues of marine organisms and they cause specific effects such as behavioral changes and alterations in metabolic processes. Also, a combination of plastic and seawater materials such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls and heavy metals can be fatal for marine life. Moreover, consumption of micro-plastics by larger marine organisms cause obstructions of the intestinal tract that leads to starvation and death because of reduced energy fitness. According to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, 111 out of the world's 312 species of seabirds, 26 species of marine mammals, and six out of seven of the words species of sea turtles have experienced issues with beach litter ingestion. Studies reveal that micro-plastics negatively impact human health due to consumption of marine organisms by humans.In addition to all these impacts, the marine debris and beach litter pose dangers to wildlife on the beaches and marine ecology. Many beach pollutants such as fishing gears and nets or oil spills jeopardize many sea animals including sea turtles, seabirds, and dolphins, and can cause serious injuries or death. Marine animals can become trapped by contaminants such as fishing lines or nets.
The present issue with all of the aforementioned ailments are only made possible from human impacts, and could be ultimately prevented without human and marine interaction. It was reported by the United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution that pollution originating from land was said to make up 80% of the world's marine pollution.
Sustainability
Clean beaches are indicators of the environmental quality and sustainable development level of a country. The Beach Cleaning Health Index is a cleaning classification method of European countries and their environments. The index determines the level of sustainability and cleanness of the countries and their beaches through classification notes such as A for excellent, B for good, C for regular, and D for bad.There are numerous sustainability indices that have been created in the name of beach health and general appearance. These indexes are dependent on a wide range of variables that are used to assess both the anthropocentric as well as natural changes to beaches. These indexes' variables often merge the goals of both environmental preservation and that of the region to which the beach belongs. In addition to the heath index used in many European countries, in 2005 Israel generated its own beach analysis, their clean coast index. The goal since the start of this program has been to maintain cleanliness of all Israel's coastline, as well as educate the public on the importance of migrating marine litter. This is one of the first Indexes to determine more than just the amount of waste removed from a beach, as has been done in the past.
The CCI evaluated beach cleanliness every 2 weeks for a period of 7 months. By using this index on a periodic basis they were able to determine what processes worked well and which one did not. Other countries in the Caribbean are employing a different form of beach health index, called the Beach Quality Index. The BQI assesses many aspects of beaches, not just litter or overall cleanliness, but anthropocentric impacts and long term effects to act somewhat as a checklist for environmental quality issues. The BQI classifies beaches as both urban and urbanized, in the hopes of assessing them to their best ability, and including all factors that may impact varying beaches. The BQI helps by establishing various components and categories to help with this classification, something that not all beach indexes include.