Last week we were delighted when several members of Maine Coast Semester 73, including students and staff, volunteered to help with the annual “Maine Coastal Cleanup” project, and headed off to Seawall Beach in Phippsburg.
Seawall Beach, which is accessed through the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area, has long been a popular destination for Chewonki programs at all times of the year in part because of the stunning views from the top of Morse Mountain, and access to the estuary and tidal zones.
Students pitched in with gusto, collecting hundreds of pounds of trash from the shoreline and dunes, and were surprised at how much of the total was represented by broken fishing gear, like crushed lobster traps, lost buoys, and many many lengths of rope.
Students bagged all the garbage and deposited it with the organizing hosts from Bates College, who work in partnership with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to do an annual survey of all the garbage collected from Maine beaches.
The event was a great success, and a good reminder that it takes shared work to protected the natural spaces we love.
Thank you clean-up crew!
