One of my favorite childhood memories is searching for sea glass along our beaches, on the other side of the Indian River Lagoon…

My parents’ friends, the Nelsons, were one of the first to build “out there,” on Hutchinson Island; I would often spend the night with their daughter Lynda.  Lynda and I would wake up in the morning before dawn, climb the stairs to the roof, and wait for the sun to rise. Like yellow gold, it would emerge over the ocean, and we would begin our treasure hunt for sea glass.

In those days, in the late 1960s and 1970s, our Martin County beaches were not “renoursished,” and if you picked the sand up in the palm of your hand,  it was beautiful and consisted of thousands of little crushed shells of every imaginable color….often a piece of sea glass would be there too.

Lynda and I had baskets her mother had given us, and on any given weekend we could fill a small basket full with glass. The most common color was brown, then green, then clear, and the rarest of all was blue! Blue was the prize. Blue was goal…Lynda always won!

It is harder to find sea glass today. And this is a very good thing…

Prior to the 1970s, and many places until the 1990s, trash was dumped from barges off the shores the United States. It was not until the 1972 passage of the “Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act” that laws, regulations, and public awareness stopped this practice.

The plethora of glass along  Atlantic beaches came from the bottles dumped with the trash. After years of being tumbled in the sea, once sharp pieces emerged rounded and frosted by nature….just beautiful!

What do they say? “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?” Thankfully in this case, there is less “treasure” to find.

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Links:

The History of Waste Disposal in the US and Ok. (http://www.deq.state.ok.us/lpdnew/wastehistory/wastehistory.htm)

Ocean Dumping History: (http://marinebio.org/oceans/ocean-dumping/)

NOAA  Ocean Dumping: http://www.gc.noaa.gov/gcil_mp_ocean_dumping.html

EPA Ocean Dumping and International and National Laws to Stop Practice of: (http://water.epa.gov/type/oceb/mprsa_before.cfm)

Sea Glass Sites: (http://www.findseaglass.net/sea-glass-colors-what-are-the-odds-of-finding-them/)(http://www.odysseyseaglass.com/north-beach-sea-glass.html) (https://westcoastseaglass.com/glass_color/cobalt-blue)