Mike Wallace wrote:

> Humans are pigs. :-)

Yes, we are, but we can at least do something to help.  For what it's worth,
my boat club does a waterway cleanup every year.  For the last five years,
we've collected more trash from the banks of our section of area waterways
(each particpating organization is assigned an area) than any other
participant and each year, there's plenty more for us to collect again.
Jayna and I were participants during our first few years and, these days
help manage the boat club's efforts.

Jayna and I have also been part of the annual reef sweep put on by a local
environmental group, Reef Relief, I believe.  This event brings out
hundreds, maybe thousands, of divers to collect bottles, cans, fishing and
other line and pretty much any garbage that has round its way into the
ocean.  Most, maybe all of the local dive charters donate their profits for
the day to the organization that, among other things, places mooring buoys
on the more popular dive sites.  We take our own boat and usually a couple
of friends out, joining a lot of other local divers in the effort to reverse
some of the damage us human pigs do.

Finally, it's a rare dive that does not see me return with as many cans
bottles and the like, all wrapped in yards and yards of fishing line.  I do
this so often that John Nitrox started to joke about it (in the most
complementary manner).  If I'm going to be underwater anyway, and I am,
there's no reason not to bring some of the trash back with me.

I'm happy to say that, unlike the waterway cleanup, we seem to collect less
garbage from the reefs each year.  Hopefully this means that at least some
boaters have learned that it's far better to put up with the inconvenience
of bringing our garbage back to shore than it is to dump it overboard.

Lee