Beach cleanups are great, and we must find other solutions to marine pollution

South Florida has seen an exciting boom in beach cleanups. It’s a generally safe way to be outside and around people, while doing something good. It may also be because more people seeking outdoor activities as indoor life as we once knew it has been canceled.

Beach cleanups started for me as recreational walks along some of Miami’s beaches less traveled, but quickly turned into a sometimes-obsessive need to rid the beach of all the trash I could see. Sometimes it was possible; other times, the magnitude would overwhelm me. Sometimes it’s all I focus on, despite my best efforts to force a mental Instagram filter over the trashcovered reality of our coastlines. However, I rarely make it a few feet without having to stop for another plastic bottle.

These cleanups increasingly are organized by local nonprofit organizations, as well as by individuals or can be smaller pop-up group efforts. With more people exposing themselves to the trash-covered truth of marine pollution, they are also becoming educated about other water-quality issues Miami faces.

At the height of lockdown, a concerning number of people wondered why beach cleanups were still going on or necessary, one saying in that confident ignorance found abundantly in the comment sections on the internet that, “The beaches have been closed for a month — there won’t be any trash!” The fact is, although littering is a problem, most of the trash found on the beach has been floating in the ocean for a while until it is finally washed ashore by the tides. For a city so intimately connected to the water, we should know more about what is in ours.

With the recent devastating fishkill being widely reported (and smelled if you live in the Morningside area), South Florida is suddenly paying attention to the water quality in Biscayne Bay. Now, we must look beyond the visible threats to water quality and focus on those not so easily seen.

Fertilizers, nutrients, oil, toxic chemicals, microplastics and animal and human waste are the microscopic problems. All that, plus record high water temperatures, rapidly decreasing areas of seagrass, severely restricted oxygen levels in the water and, ultimately, the death of marine ecosystems and marine life of all sorts.

Then there is the political problem: the unwillingness to take bold action to protect Miami against the threats of climate change, which will further stress South Florida’s sewer and septic systems with rising sea levels, as well as common sense solutions that can be implemented now and relatively cheaply. Filters over storm-drain outflows, for example, would prevent much of the street pollution from being washed out to sea with each heavy rain.

At this point, anything other than bold action by our elected, business and community leaders to protect Biscayne Bay and all of South Florida’s precious water sources is tantamount to sacrificing a core characteristic of our state. Social change takes place in small bursts, usually prompted by a catalyst — like the massive die-off in Biscayne Bay, perhaps?

I love calling Miami home, but let’s be real, we’re not here for the convenient commute, mild weather or the affordable housing. We take pride living in living in a tropical paradise, where others come to vacation. But will they still come with the water smelling like death the way it does right now in Morningside, or when the toxic algae blooms make their way to Miami? What do we have left when no one wants to vacation where we live anymore? Will you stay after our tropical paradise is lost?