A teenage diver found tons of golf ball accumulating on the seafloor off Pebble Beach, near Carmel,

Ateenage diver found tons of golf ball accumulating on the seafloor off Pebble Beach, near Carmel, California, a beach very close a Golf Club.

She, we the helpt of an expert, and volunters, removed 39,602 golf balls from intertidal and nearshore environments near Carmel, California, and combined with concurrent cleanup efforts, they report the retrieval of 50,681 balls, approximately 2.5 tons of debris.

- A harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) swimming near a dense aggregation of golf balls, and a threatened southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) handles a golf ball.

According to authors of the study, golf ball pollution is likely an underreported problem associated with coastal courses worldwide. Nearshore marine environments in close proximity to golf courses may similarly accumulate debris and should be surveyed to develop context-dependent mitigation strategies. Marine plastic pollution is a diffuse and seemingly intractable global problem, but the identification and remediation of known point sources of pollution is a tangible step in reducing the deleterious impacts of anthropogenic activity on marine systems

• Photo:  Several examples of dense aggregations of hundreds of golf balls encountered in the nearshore environment at the Pebble Beach study site.
  
• Reference: Kewer et al., 2019. Quantifying marine debris associated with coastal golf courses Marine Pollution Bulletin. 

[Photo description: dense aggregations of golf balls]