Safe Boating

Take necessary steps to keep local waters clean

By Roz Butziger
Posted 2/17/16

Let’s talk trash! Narragansett Bay is one of our nation’s most beautiful bays, home to our fish and shellfish, great for swimming. How do we keep it that way? We use common sense and we have …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in
Safe Boating

Take necessary steps to keep local waters clean

Posted

Let’s talk trash! Narragansett Bay is one of our nation’s most beautiful bays, home to our fish and shellfish, great for swimming. How do we keep it that way? We use common sense and we have regulations to guide us.

Any boat over 26 feet long needs to have a MARPOL decal, available for sale at marine stores like West Marine or Salk’s Hardware and Marine. This decal lets you and your passengers know what waste is illegal to dump overboard. Within three miles of Rhode Island’s coast, you cannot dump over any garbage – no banana peels, no chicken bones. Put them in a garbage bag and dump them in the trash barrel at your next port. Even if you are 12 miles out you still cannot dump any garbage over one inch in diameter. And you cannot dump any plastic anywhere.

Do you realize it takes 400 to 1,000 years for plastics to break down completely? And as they break down, toxic compounds enter the food chain and guess what? It gets into the food you eat!

Things that seem harmless can cause major damage. It is tragic to see one of our harbor seals dying because it has a plastic 6-pack holder around its neck choking it. Your motor can suffer too. Cool water intakes for inboards have sucked in plastic bags and caused overheating. Even our beaches are littered with the trash that washes up from careless boatsmen. If a disposable water bottle is placed on the gunwhale and falls overboard, grab your net and retrieve it. You wouldn’t throw trash out your car window onto your neighbor’s lawn. Don’t throw it off your boat either. What about cigarette butts? They are so small. How much harm can they do? Actually quite a lot. Fish and birds and marine mammals mistake them for food. The butts can lodge in their intestines and kill them. Also, the butts may look like they contain cotton, but this is really toxic non-biodegradable cellulose acetate. They can contain cadmium and lead! If you want to catch a bass, don’t kill it with your pollution before it gets to be legal size.

Planning to get your MARPOL decal soon? Do it before you get underway. Friends of ours had theirs attached to their old trash bin. When they threw it out to replace it with a new one, the decal went with it. Sure enough, the next day when they were coming back to their marina, they were stopped by the Coast Guard, boarded and inspected. All PFD’s, fire extinguisher, registration, etc. were in order, but there was no MARPOL decal, and they were written up.

Responsible boating means whatever you take out, you should bring back. Never too early to start teaching your kids well before the boating season. Have them reuse and recycle at home and it should be an easy transition to good boating practices. Who should be more concerned than us? After all, we are the Ocean State.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here