Click the words above “Respect Tomales Bay – Eastshore roadside update” to view this entire post.

The last update of this sort from 13 March may be found here.

Almost 3 months has passed with lots of interesting itmes to share.

As always, click on an image to see a larger version.

The capsized boat first reported here is still laying upside-down, leaking who knows what else into the bay.

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On the weekend of 9-10 April, Grassy Point pullout was filled to capacity with these cars. When I stopped to clean up the area, I sadly discovered someone had tossed two live ochre starfish into the road. Both were now quite dead. Starfish have been hammered by a virus the past few years all up and down the Pacific Coast and are only recently starting to rebound.

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Between the almost always open and overflowing dumpsters at Tony’s Seafood

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And the dumpster at Nick’s Cove (AKA Miller Boat Launch) seen here on 31 May , also almost always open and overflowing, there is no end of food to attract ravens and gulls to scatter trash everywhere. I am told by County Parks that residents of Tomales and Marshall have been caught dumping household trash in these bins more than once. Full bins mean fishermen make an even bigger mess on the weekend, some of which is blown back into the bay. Please Respect This Place.

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Here is Nick’s launch dumpster the following weekend

Each weekend I pick up the area around the boat launch, sometimes twice. Often I see fishermen unloading all they brought with them which they no longer want, carrying it to the small dumpster. The dumpster that is almost always overflowing, often with countless aluminum beer and soda cans. Last weekend I saw one such man carry at least 25 beer cans over to throw away. “Hi, you know you could take those home and recycle them” I offered. His gait steady, his tired voice replied “I know all about aluminum cans, I work in a can factory”. “Then you know how much electricity is required to make a new can?” Puzzled look. “The more electricity we use, the more CO2 we dump into the atmosphere, the more acidic the ocean becomes, the less fish you have to catch”. Blank stare as he dumps the entire bag of cans onto the over-filled bin, some of them spilling onto the ground as he turns and walks back to his boat. And so it goes…

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Roadside fishermen still have no respect for the Bay they love to visit.

How about we ban fires along this stretch? Bob, is that something you could get rolling? From what I have seen, there is a high correlation between those that build fires and those that leave a mess.

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Grassy Point visitors seem determined to out-disgust the roadside fishermen at Tony’s.

Today (10 June) I stopped by to pick up Grassy Point and found a very large, fresh pile of human excrement deposited on the beach below the wide spot. When I say on the beach, I should say in the bay, as it was well below the high water mark covered with strips of brown cardboard stained a different shade of brown. Whoever left the portable BBQ box along with the rest of their picnic items scattered about seems to have disassembled the box to use as TP.

Worry not, no photos were recorded, but I did scrape it up best I could and pack it out.

Please Respect This Place.

Three images of beauty to remind us why we all need to be mindful of how we treat our planet, as well as sometimes gently remind those around us to do the same.

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Previous related post may be found here.

See the first post in this series “Respect our Tomales Bay” here.

See other posts featuring The Birds of Tomales Bay here.