Destin Beaches Analysis

Imagine walking along a beach and seeing the large amount of trash littering the sand and sea oats, which is also known as beach grass. Nobody around the beach stops to clean up the trash that is scattered across the miles of land. Most people are only concerned with the water and the immediate area of where he or she would set up his or her beach chair and other beach items. Consequently, the sand behind the strip of beach chairs is left trashed and dirtied. At night, beach goers like to enjoy bonfires on the beach. The artificial light from the fire or from the night lights around the beach cause the turtles to mistake it for the moonlight, which guides them towards the water. In Destin, Florida, many of the beaches are littered due to the

Every year, nine billion tons of trash and waste are being dumped into the ocean. Some of this trash stays in the oceans for years, while other trash ends up on our beaches. On beaches, the majority of littered trash is made up of cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bottles, and plastic bags. The turtles living in and around our Destin waters mistake these plastic items for food and attempt to eat it. These turtles then either choke and die or are stuck and die from starvation. During the tourist seasons, the amount of littered trash on our Destin beaches triples. We have four endangered turtle species on our beaches: Loggerhead Turtles, Green Turtles, Leatherback Turtles, and Kemp’s Ridley Turtles. These turtles are becoming endangered due to choking on our trash that we leave lying around. One way we can fix this is by not littering and cleaning up our messes. By not littering on our Destin beaches, we have lessened the chance of turtles becoming ill, choking, or becoming entangled from our trash. When we clean up our mess, the turtles have a better chance of

The turtles chose our beaches as their home. The least we could do is make sure they are safe and to keep choosing our beaches as their home. To do this, we need to make a few more rules, especially during tourist season. I feel as if there should be rules made against littering on beaches. I know there can be fines, but there should be stricter rules against littering and people on the beaches to make sure it is enforced. I believe we should also make rules about unnatural bright lights past a certain hour of the night. Keeping the beaches dark will help the turtles find their way to the ocean easier. Finally, we should make sure to hill all holes on the beaches before going home so an unfortunate little turtle does not get stuck while on its way to the ocean. Changing these few things on our beaches will ensure that the four turtles species that reside on our beaches will not go