Dirty jobs

Keeping beaches clean becomes passionate obsession on local man

Posted

“Bucket” Bob Daven spent more than an hour sorting through trash recovered early Sunday along the beach at Mickler’s Landing.

There were spent fireworks, cigarette butts and plastic drink bottles. Buried in the sandy debris were broken toys, empty lighters, broken chairs and straws.

The pile of garbage was revolting, a sickening statement of indifference and ignorance of an area that’s supposed to be a pristine sanctuary.

Daven helps clean the beach every morning. He got help on Sunday as local residents helped clean up the mess left behind by careless beachgoers on Independence Day. Apparently, one of the most-embraced beach adages “take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints” didn’t count on days of revelry.

“This was a big excessive,” Daven said.

Empty boxes of firework mortars were stacked at the entrance for pickup. So were several contractor-sized garbage bags filled with trash.

“They can pick this up every day and they still won’t be able to keep up,” Daven said.

Jennifer Foreman often walks the beach looking for trinkets lost or left. She uses a metal detector, but she’s always scouring for trash, too.

“I keep one bag for trash; one bag for treasure,” she said.

Although they were replaced nearly 50 years ago with pull tabs, Foreman said she’s found too many old soft-drink can pop-tops to count. She also has an array of fishing lures and weights, along with silver jewelry.

She said a friend recently found a squared nail near the beach access at Mickler’s Landing, a likely remnant from a sunken Spanish galleon from the 16th century.

But for every piece of valued history, there are several hundred pieces of liter.

It took Daven seven years to walk across A1A to explore his local beach. He was appalled the moment his toes hit the sand.

“From that first day, I’ve been committed to keeping this beach clean,” he said. “I grew up in the Boy Scouts and one of my projects was cleaning up the woods in our town. I’ve always wanted to keep places clean.

“When I came out to the beach for the first time, it broke my heart. The level of disrespect was mind-blowing.”

Daven has only missed his rounds at Mickler’s Landing three times this year – twice for high tide and once to fulfill a doctor’s appointment.

“Even if it’s raining, 30 degrees or 100 degrees, I’m out here,” he said. “This has become a project of mine, and it’s getting harder to keep up with it. It’s really all about respect.”

That’s why others, like Foreman, are eager to do their part.

He said cigarette butts are the biggest problem with more than a billion being recovered on beaches every year.

“They are the No. 1 pollutant in the world,” Daven said.

There also are unintended consequences with balloons. He said families often come to the beach to celebrate an anniversary, birthday or memory of a loved one by releasing balloons.

“Balloons don’t go to heaven,” he said. “They fall back to the water and on the beach.”

Where Daven is waiting to add them to his pile of shame.