Students Clean Up Trash-Riddled Bay Shore

Joshua Ceballos/Investigative Editor

Biscayne Bay’s shores are littered with garbage. Single-use plastics and fishing waste wash up every day on the Biscayne Bay Campus, and student groups are working to clean it up.

This Saturday was the Student Government Council at BBC’s fall 2019 “Day at the Bay,” a beach cleanup event done once a semester in partnership with the School of Environment, Arts and Society. Members of SGC-BBC, SEAS and students from FIU and Miami Dade College showed up to pick up several garbage bags worth of waste and plastic.

SGC-BBC President Pamela Ho Fung reaches into the mangroves on the shoreline to pick up plastic bags caught among the roots.

Junior sustainability major Savanna Zieger (left) and junior environmental studies major (right) Alyssa Torres pull a rope that was buried in the ground.

Gabriella Llana, SGC-BBC sustainability director, has been on the job for a little over a week but said she’s glad to be out helping the environment and has several more projects in mind.

“You can do this kind of project anywhere. At home, on campus, in your neighborhood. We can all do a little bit to help,” said Llana.

SGC-BBC has done “Day at the Bay” for over ten years according to student government advisor Larissa Adames. They partner with SEAS to add an educational component to the cleanup that Ho Fung said is just as important as picking up plastic.

“SEAS gives a speech about the effects of plastic pollution. We try and connect the dots between action and education,” said Ho Fung. “There’s a gap between educating people and actually putting that information into action.”

Bottle caps, candy wrappers and plastic bags were some of the common articles of trash on the shore, but a few objects stood out including tennis balls, hair combs, and a yarmulke.

A discarded yarmulke, or traditional cloth cap worn by Jewish men, washed up among the mangroves at BBC.

Miami Dade College student Daniel Wich came to the cleanup with his girlfriend who is an FIU Student. He chooses to get as deep into the mangroves as he can to pick up fishing nets caught under the rocks.