Twenty-five years ago, the Vineyard Conservation Society (VCS) had the novel idea of holding a beach cleanup on the newly designated Earth Day. Now beach cleanups have become a staple of the push to preserve the environment. This Earth Day, April 22, VCS invites all Islanders to head out to their favorite beach at 10 am and bring a trash bag to kick off spring. At noon, there will be an afterparty at the Harbor View, where guest speakers Tyson Bottenus and Athena Aicher will speak about their research to clean up plastic bags in the ocean.
VCS organized its first beach cleanup to extend from Vineyard Haven to Edgartown along State Road. They were ambitious, but didn’t make it to downtown Edgartown before dark. This, however, marked the first of many successful years of beach cleanups. Through the efforts of VCS and the Vineyard community, propane tanks, toaster ovens, car parts, and countless small-but-deadly balloons were hauled off the beach and taken to the dump to be recycled or thrown away.
The currents around Martha’s Vineyard have been known to dredge up all sorts of strange things and deposit them on the beach, where they wait to be picked up. From boat seats to lawnmowers, the veterans of VCS Earth Day beach cleanups have seen it all, but one of the strangest things turned up near Lake Tashmoo in 1997.
On that particular Earth Day, Brendan O’Neill and Linsey Lee unearthed a message in a bottle. In it were the name and address of a boy named Jon Skillman from Newton North High School. VCS board member Penny Uhlendorf reached out to him to tell him they had found his test tube.
For a school project, Jon had released the test tube from the Woods Hole ferry to chart the currents around Martha’s Vineyard. There were around 2,000 test tubes, and so far he had received about 350 responses. Up until the Lees’ test tube, the most unusual one had been found in the Detroit River in Michigan. While the proximity of this test tube’s release point to where it was found would make it seem like this was a rather unremarkable find, Jon conducted his experiment in 1973. This test tube had been missing for more than 20 years, until the ocean saw fit to deposit it on Martha’s Vineyard.
VCS wants to celebrate the countless cool moments like these that have happened throughout the quarter of a century that they’ve been organizing these beach cleanups. Every year people collect hundreds of bags of trash and help bring awareness to the community regarding conservation issues. The party at the Harbor View has been expanded this year, thanks to a generous donation from Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank. There will be a raffle for adults and one for children, as well as T shirts with artwork designed by Jules Feiffer.
Local organizations help support this annual event, including the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank, Lagoon Pond Association, Friends of Sengekontacket, Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, Tisbury Waterways, Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, Squibnocket Association, the Church of Latter Day Saints, MV Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby Committee, Junior Girl Scout Troop 69246, Brownie Troop 66207, and groups from Tisbury, West Tisbury and Oak Bluffs Schools, along with generous food and drink donations from Josh and Angela Aronie, Cronig’s Market, Lucky Hank’s, Scottish Bakehouse, Tyson Foods, and Vineyard Grocer. Also, extra-special thanks to the DPWs of Tisbury, Oak Bluffs, and Edgartown, and the refuse disposal employees responsible for disposing of hundreds of bags of trash.
A list of supervised beaches can be found at the VCS website: vineyardconservation.org.