Today we’re marking the 49th Earth Day after it’s inception in 1970. Celebrations?! It should be a wake up call, an urgent clarion call to action right round the globe! Let us not kid ourselves the environment is in a deteriorating state and we’re killing Earth’s creatures.
Scenes are pictured at the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve where beaches are littered with plastic and storm strewn fishing gear from nets to piles of rope, fish traps. Recent whale carcasses washed up near Buffels Bay and another on the Atlantic side near the Tommy T Tucker shipwreck.
Nature on the Edge 
Not a beautiful sight.
Isn’t it awful, the third whale casualty in so many months.
So sad – but I believe pictures and calls for action will work in the end. Too late maybe, but I
sorry, the comment went away too early…When I was a young girl I used to have a poster with a Cherokee saying that went something like this: Man will only wake up when the birds are falling down from the sky and the fish lay dead in the oceans. Well – we are on our way and nearly there now. But I don’t know when we will wake up. Our hope is for the young generation who will not accept the earth they are inheriting after us.
It is tragic that so little is down before it’s too late! Though voices are growing louder now, activism is increasing, Extinction Rebellion and brave young Greta Thunberg are making waves! So much to be done.
Yes, so much to be done. May it not be too late.
Thanks for your post documenting the state of decay we are inducing our planet, it is difficult stuff to look at let alone photograph. Perhaps humans will develop enough respect or anger to change the steady march towards destruction of the planet that sustains us. Most days I don’t see how that will come about but if those of us care photograph, write, draw paint and talk enough something may happen. That is all that we have.
Yes, hoping the voices grow louder and there’s a persistent activism that things have to change!
It must have been hard to see that whale. But I’m glad you posted it because a picture is worth a thousand words and perhaps it will motivate people to scale down their consumerism, let their voices be heard by policymakers and corporations to increase efficiency and use of renewable energy.
Hope that this is the turning point in time! So many voices are rising now that policy must change for the better?
Yes, I think the balance is tipping, let’s hope for the best!
Does anyone remove the plastic from Cape Point beaches?
I’ve not witnessed any of the SANParks teams on the beaches, though have seen Working for the Coast on some of the hiking trails. It’s a tragedy to see how much debris is strewn about in addition to plastic – crayfish traps, ropes, bouys, fishing nets.
Well said Liz, sad but true we are murdering our Mother Earth
I’m both heartbroken and hopeful. We’re nearly at the end of one era and the beginning of another I believe. Things like Chernobyl give me hope. It just needs a small shift and things will come back. The Mother will roar.
Alison
How I understand this paradox of feelings! “The Mother will roar” … hope so! It is incredible how nature has recovered round the Chernobyl exclusion zone; and thriving without people! Hopefully the growing voices of activism around the world are forcing the change and countries are finally waking up.
When I moved here 25 years ago Cape Point was nothing like this. How did it go so wrong so fast? Or were we just not looking Liz? Let’s hope no more Southern Rights need to be freed from the ropes attached to the oyster catching pots off Jaeger’s Walk this year.
Isn’t it awful how this acceleration of catastrophes adds up. Just so many more fishing vessels, more illegal netting, more crayfish poaching. The marine officials can’t handle / or don’t have the necessary wherewithal to control the overfishing…. Have photographed blatant daylight crayfish net poaching in the CP marine sanctuaries. A friend was out kayaking off CP when the shoals of yellowtail were running, hundreds of small boats where he witnessed fishermen shooting seals. Aren’t those longline octopus traps the worst for entangling sea creatures, yet there have been no studies on the sustainability of the octopus catch! Makes my blood boil! It’s a free for all out there.
Those undulating brown surfaces in half your photos reminded me immediately of something quite different: the congealed volcanic flows that people find so attractive in a place like Zion National Park in the western United States:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/zion-national-park/
That’s quite a comparison! Even beauty is found in death, viewing this scene in person had a pretty powerful visceral effect.