Picture this: sitting on the beach watching the sunrise. The sand is still cool from the early morning high tide. Seabirds float along the shoreline in search of their morning meal. It is quiet except for the sound of the crashing waves against the shore and the occasional cry of the seagulls. Other early risers are walking along the beach with their dogs or peering down as they search for shells.

This image conjures up happy memories of time spent at the ocean and on the coast.

Each beach I have visited has different things to discover. I have pieces of bleached corals and sand dollars from the summers spent at Holden Beach, NC and a large black whelk shell that washed up on Wrightsville Beach, NC. When I'm home in the city, these pieces remind me of the beautiful days spent by the sea.

I have another kind of treasure from the sea in my collection, one that is rare and made only by the combination of humans and nature. I remember a summer I spent at my aunt's home in Plymouth, Massachusetts. We walked down to the beach and I found many pieces of sea glass. The frosty pieces didn't sparkle in the sunlight, but the colors stood out against the yellow-ish sand. Since I had never been able to find any at North Carolina's beaches, I was amazed to find so many in New England. I collected a large clear piece, some tiny soft blues ones, and a green one that still had sharp edges.

Sea glass originates as pieces of glass from broken bottles, broken tableware, or even shipwrecks, which are rolled and tumbled in the ocean for years until all of their edges are rounded off, and the slickness of the glass has been worn to a frosted appearance. Sea and beach glass are found everywhere in the world because people have discarded glass in the oceans and water bodies because historically, it was normal for waterfront communities worldwide to discard their trash in the water.

Recently, I have not been able to find sea glass on other beaches along the East coast. Sea glass is getting harder to find for a few reasons. One of them is a positive one— there is just less dumping in the oceans today. Less trash and less glass, which leads to less sea glass. However, the downside is that many glass items have been replaced by plastic. Plastic doesn’t break down the way glass does, so it stays in the ocean as pollution longer.

Sea glass is beautiful, but it is also a reminder of how much human activity has affected the ocean. When we visit the beaches, it is important to remember that they are not just a recreational area. Beaches are part of complex ecosystems and are the home to many animals and plants. While I love visiting the coast, I always keep in mind that I need to leave it as I found it and I'm careful to pick up my trash.

I think it is a sign of nature’s true power and beauty that our trash can enter the seas and then the ocean spits it back out as something beautiful. We poison and mistreat our Earth and she just keeps giving…giving….giving…

Earth Day is April 22! https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/ocean/earthday.html