My typical end-of-day routine during the summer (and the reason I put up with the madness) is to bike the mile-and-three-quarters up to the Bend in the Road, swim a 1/4 mile, walk back to my bike, chatting along the way with people I know (or don't know), and bike home; my mini-triathlon. On Saturday I decided to do a little snorkeling, partly to get a better view for some underwater photography. So I flippered and snorkeled, face down, my usual 1/4 mile stretch. Okay, I didn't love wearing all the stuff, and I now know that swimming without having things strapped all over my body is much more enjoyable, but what was most distressing was the fact that in that 1/4 mile swim I didn't see one living creature.
When I was a child, and when my own children were young, these waters were teeming with ocean life: minnows, pipe fish, whelks, spider crabs, sand crabs, hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs, and more. Many a happy beach day was spent collecting specimens for our salt water aquarium.
My first thought was that the preponderance of swimmers had driven everything out.
And then I remembered the mountains of sand that line this beach many recent winters - spoils from the dredging of nearby Sengekontacket - from the Bend down into Cow Bay, otherwise known as "beach replenishment."
Yes, unfortunately, those mountains of sand have washed down into the water and smothered the ecosystem. Not just in the immediate environs, but all along State Beach, assisted by the daily tides.
Why is this allowed to happen? Killing off an entire ecosystem, for what? And not only is the ecosystem at State Beach deader than a doornail, but this is stage two of a destructive process, stage one being the dredging up of entire shellfish beds in the pond and leaving the once living grasses, shellfish, worms, and other micro-organisms to rot in a pile of sand.
Why, why, why?
Does anyone even care? (besides the shellfishermen I've spoken to, whose concerns are mostly ignored)
File this under Poor Martha.
