Annual cleanup nets lots of trash along beaches
New London — At Ocean Beach Park, a small but dedicated band of volunteers began their day Saturday canvassing opposite sides of the beach, picking up another year's worth of litter.
Cleanup Captain Louise Fabrykiewicz has been participating in such events since the early 1990s, and organized the Ocean Beach cleanup for years.
She said people are surprised by how much trash can fit in a small section of the beach.
A few years ago, she said, she told 10 kids to stand in a circle and pick up every cigarette butt between them.
"They picked up 150," she said.
The cleanups locally are part of International Coastal Cleanup Day, which aims to clean up the coast and catalogue global marine debris. The cleanups in Connecticut are organized by Save the Sound.
Ocean Beach Park was one of three beach cleanups in New London, which also saw initiatives at Greens Harbor Beach by students at Three Rivers Community College and Mitchell Beach by students at Mitchell College.
Across the region, residents also participated in cleanups in Old Lyme, East Lyme and Niantic.
Two sailors from the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, who originally had intended to participate in the Walk to End Alzheimer's disease also taking place at Ocean Beach, found themselves enlisted into Fabrykiewicz's cause after a brief conversation that morning.
In their first 20 minutes, Jeremy Mulkins and Anthony Eicks had picked up 237 cigarette butts, a McDonald's parfait cup and several empty Capri-Sun drink packages.
"I didn't even know it's International Beach Cleanup Day ... it's a good thing she's doing," Mulkins said.
Last year, volunteers in the U.S. picked up 3,969,553 pounds of garbage along the coast.
For the same year in Connecticut, 2,226 volunteers picked up 22,697 pounds of trash.
Many of the participants locally this year were first-timers who came out to support their favorite beach or state park.
Eight members of the Kingsley-Gadwaw family drove from Norwich and Jewett City to make the cleanup at Bluff Point State Park their family outing.
They come to the park regularly in the summer and took the opportunity to do something together.
"It's something we can do as a family," Heather Kingsley said.
Apart from the many cigarettes and plastic bags they picked up, they also found a bottle of motor oil, a radiator hose and a maxi-pad.
The family joined 50 other people spread across the state park in the cleanup, as well as two representatives from Mystic Aquarium, MaryEllen Mateleska, director of education and conservation, and educator Christine Corah, to clean up Bluff Point.
The aquarium sees the direct link between the accumulation of trash and the damage it does to the environment when it rehabilitates sick and injured animals, Mateleska said.
For example, a seal this year, and a leatherback sea turtle the year before, became entangled in fishing line and had to be freed.
Mateleska and Corah said they were particularly focused on the train tracks, which accumulate a lot of trash, which has a tendency to move.
Whether by wind or waterway, "all trash will eventually make its way to the ocean," Mateleska said.
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