The Wrack
We show up for the shore.
Sargassum belongs in the ocean. The trouble starts when it piles up on the sand, sits there, and takes the beach away from the people who use it. We are not fighting the sea. We are helping a stretch of shore stay usable.
Cleanups so far. This page went up before the first one did. Every number here stays at zero until a real morning happens on a real beach, and then it will say what actually happened, including the parts that went badly.
That is the whole point of putting it up empty. You will be able to see whether we did the thing.
How bad is it right now
Tap a stretch and say what you can see. It takes about four seconds and it is more use than a forecast.
Reports stay on your phone. This site has no server, so nothing you write here reaches anybody until you press SEND, and then you get to read the email first. We are not going to draw you a map of other people's reports that is secretly just your own.
What you have logged
What sargassum actually is
- A floating seaweed that drifts across the Atlantic. Out at sea it is habitat, not rubbish. Fish live in it. Turtles use it.
- It has been arriving in far bigger amounts than it used to, and it lands where it lands.
- Fresh, it is mostly a smell of the sea. After a few days in the sun it rots, and rotting is where the sulphur smell comes from.
- Nobody stops the Atlantic. What you can do is keep a particular stretch usable, and do it again next month.
We do not clean the ocean. We manage what has piled up on a beach, where that is allowed, with permission, using hand tools.
A Wrack Day
Short on purpose. People come back to something that ended while they were still enjoying it.
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Gather
One circle. We name the stretch we are working and who is leading it. There is a chair facing the water that nobody sits in.
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Brief
Where the nests are, where not to walk, what the heat is doing, what to do if you feel sick. Five minutes, every time, even for people who have been before.
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Work
Ninety minutes with hand tools. Seaweed goes in the bags, sand stays on the beach. Nobody digs into a dune.
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Count
Bags, feet of shoreline, how long it took, one photo from the same spot as last time. This is how you can tell whether it is working.
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Sit down
Water, fruit, shade. Somebody who knows the coast says something short. Then everyone goes home.
Bring: closed shoes, a hat, sunscreen. We bring gloves, bags, tools, water and shade. Never turn up having had to buy anything.
The rules we do not bend
A cleanup that hurts somebody, or wrecks a nest, has done more damage than the seaweed did.
Turtles first
- Nesting season runs through most of the warm months on this coast. During it, marked nests are untouchable and we keep well clear.
- Hand tools only. Machines on a nesting beach are a permit question and a different conversation entirely.
- We follow whatever the state and the local beach authority say. If a rule and a plan disagree, the rule wins and we go home.
- If anyone sees a turtle or a nest that is not marked, work stops and we report it. Not later. Then.
People
- Mornings only. Heat on open sand is the thing most likely to hurt somebody, and it is not close.
- Rotting piles can give off gas that is genuinely unpleasant and, in a thick pile in still air, worse than unpleasant. If a pile stinks hard, that one is not a volunteer job.
- Water every twenty minutes, whether you feel like it or not. Shade you can actually reach.
- Anyone can stop at any time and nobody asks why.
The beach itself
- Sand stays. Cities lose sand to careless cleanups and it costs a fortune to put back.
- Dunes and their plants are not touched at all.
- What we collect goes somewhere legal and documented. Not a car park, not somebody's garden.
Not everybody does everything
Enthusiasm is not training. Three levels, and we say out loud which one a job is before anyone starts it.
Raking and bagging fresh weed, carrying, counting, photos, water runs, welcoming people.
Older piles, anything near a marked nest, loading, anything involving a vehicle.
Deep rotting piles, machinery, anything in the water, anything a permit or a licensed contractor covers.
The Shore Receipt
Every cleanup gets written down and published, the same way every other number on this site does. Date, beach, how many turned up, how much shoreline, how long, what we collected, where it went, and the same photo angle as last time.
Including the ones where four people showed up and it rained. Especially those. A receipt you only publish when it flatters you is an advert.
What this is not
- Not a solution to sargassum. We do not have one. Nobody does.
- Not free labour for a hotel. If a business wants a stretch kept clear on a schedule, that is a conversation with us, not an ask of volunteers.
- Not a photo opportunity. One before, one after, same angle, and no filming somebody's kid without asking.
- Not lecturing tourists. Nobody was ever taught anything by being embarrassed on a beach.
- Not a product line. If any of this ever becomes something useful, that will be after a lab says it is safe, not because it would be a good story.
On anything made from what we collect. Sargassum can carry arsenic and other heavy metals, which is a matter of record and not a maybe. Nothing collected here will be sold, given away, composted onto food, or described as fertiliser unless an independent lab has tested that batch and said it is safe. Until that day it goes to legal disposal.
We take care of the place we party in
Same beach.
Every month.
One viral cleanup is a photograph. The same stretch, monthly, for a year, is a relationship. We would rather have the second one.