At first glance Frank Bay Beach looked spic and span, but a dozen eagle-eyed second-graders from Gifft Hill School picked up about 100 pounds of trash off the beach in less than hour as part of their Coastweeks field trip. After a walk around the adjacent Small Pond to Enighed Pond beach, they picked up another five pounds.
“When the turtles eat the garbage, they get sick and die,” said Noah Turner, 7, taking a break from scouring the rocky beach.
Embeyah Braithwaite, 7, explained further. She said that sometimes turtles mistake plastic bags in the water for jelly fish. “And they eat them,” she said.
The students found all the usual items. Slews of bottles, pieces of broken glass, paper napkins, straws, caps and more were tucked back in the bush and among the rocks. At the southern end of Frank Bay Beach, they uncovered a couple of yards of chain and a bucket lid, but the cast iron pipe sitting in the bushes along with what looked like machine parts were far beyond the scope of Coastweeks cleanups.
The information on what students pick up is gathered by the Ocean Conservancy, a worldwide organization that has sponsored the annual coastal cleanup for 28 years.
Like Turner, other students also got the message from V.I. National Park education specialist Laurel Brannick that garbage on the beach gets into the water and hurts the sea life.
“It’s to save the living creatures in the world,” said Kai Sealy, 8, adding that it wasn’t hard work to pick up the trash.
It was a labor of love for Brannick too. Furloughed from her park job because of the federal government shutdown, she volunteered for the Friends of the Park, which sponsors Coastweeks on St. John, to do the trip and switched the location from the park’s Francis Bay to a beach not run by the park, Frank Bay.
“The kids were going to be disappointed,” she said, adding that her son, Dennis Bigrig, 7, is also in that second-grade class.
Brannick said she was proud of the students for their efforts. “They were out of water and hot and sweaty,” she said.
Brannick, an avid birdwatcher and mover and shaker in the Audubon Society of the Virgin Islands, also gave the students some bird watching pointers at Small Pond before the Coastweeks cleanup began.
“That’s our native duck, the white-cheeked pintail,” she said, showing the students how to use the binoculars.
The students received appreciative words from a pair of tourists who opted for Frank Bay Beach instead of flouting the closures at the national park beaches.
“You’re doing a good job, guys,” said Jennifer Cason of Alabama.
None of the students thought they had a hard job to do, but Georgia Ferrigno did allow that it was hot in the bush.
“But we’re helping our planet,” she said.
The students also braved the jungle-like conditions of the narrow path around Small Pond, where they encountered an iguana sitting in the tree just a few feet away. After a few shrieks from the students, the iguana hopped to another branch farther away from the noise.
The cleanup started with a peacock sighting at Frank Bay Beach.
The students were accompanied by their teacher, Jillian Dray.
“We live in such a beautiful place and they should appreciate it,” she said.
