Nov 11, 2019
By: Rachel Boyd
Edited By: Devonta Davis
Green living does not take years of practice to make a difference all you need is a fishing pole and some initiative.
The Gasparilla Pirate Festival is a long-standing tradition in the Tampa Bay area where people engage in parties, contests, and beads collecting over a weekend. The problem with this event is that often times the beads end up in the bottom of the bay which can cause problems for the ecosystem.
Five years ago, local teenage boys Demetri and Ethan Sedita, founded Green Gasparilla when they noticed the festival’s beads were leaving toxins behind in the water causing, problems for the environment.
According to David Hastings, an Eckerd College marine science professor, over two-thirds of the beads that are thrown are manufactured overseas and contained 100 parts per million of lead. This can be harmful to both the environment and the animals that ingest the beads mistaking them for food.
“Everybody’s hurling loads of them and I can’t say for sure, but there’s got to be hundreds of thousands entering the water every year,” said Demetri.
The two teens started off using regular fishing poles but in doing so they realized that their problem was bigger than the hook at the end of the line.
“We were removing a couple thousand while that is amazing it is hardly a drop in the bucket,” said Demetri.
After the cell-phone and GoPro footage were not getting the job done anymore the two boys decided to start using an underwater drone to get a better visual about how many beads lay on the bottom of the channel.
“For the past year, we have have had the drone,” said Demetri. “Which has been amazing because now we have footage and it is no longer out of sight or out of mind problem.”
Green Gasparilla has hosted two diver cleanups to try to reach the beads, but unfortunately, they only recovered a fraction of the total number of beads that are in the water this is due to the water displacing the beads and constantly moving them around.
“You can have 10,000 divers in a channel, but you would never get all the beads because they move and they sink that is why we need to stop it at the source,” said Demetri.
The goal of the organization is simple and has a clear plan to achieve it. The teens know there is only one way to stop the beads from polluting the water and that is to not put them in there initially.
“We want people to stop throwing beads over the water, it is pretty simple”
To learn more about sustainability and how you can become involved with this organization visit Greengasparilla.org.
