Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for October 01, 2021

We don’t know why they beach themselves, but the frequency seems to correlate with the amount of microplastics and other pollutants in the ocean.

I’ve seen this first hand. When I was stationed in Japan, we used to support the U. S. Coast Guard at a place called Marcus Island (Minami Tori Shima). Marcus island is about a thousand miles away from any sizable population center. Yet, there is all kinds of garbage washed up on the beach. For some reason, women’s shoes are a big part of the trash.

Marcus Island is a triangular heap of coral whose longest side is about 4,500 feet.

There isn’t a lot to do when you are stationed 1,000 miles away from anywhere, so the commander of the installation had his men do a “beach walk” about once every other month to clean the place up.

Each week, we would haul in food, mail and other supplies and take back their garbage. They didn’t call us “trash haulers” for no reason.

I bet that’s noisy.

They may feel their time is up…. awwww

=(

Check the blow hole!

All the plastic is the reason the whale beached in the first place.

Well, that’s putting a positive spin on things…

It wants to return to the whalederness.

Why are the whales not allowed to go to the beach on vacation like we do?

One of those “sad but true” deals.

The whale just heaved all that trash onto the beach. It was giving him a stomach ache.