What’s really around a beach?

Beaches are family places, where you go to have fun, enjoy the sun and the ocean. It may seem great, but little do people know what’s really in or around them. Some sources that secrete fecal contamination are; partially treated wastewater that happens during periods of capacity of over flowing or combined sewers, disconnected sewer lines, failing septic systems, septic maintenance, etc. There's also non-human sources as well such as; leakage from ponds and storage areas where livestock manure is, land manure, wildlife, etc. It’s important to know because not only do humans swim in the ocean but so do marine life. A study was conducted to get samples for pathogens, in four microbial categories, which were protozoa, pathogenic bacteria, bovine viruses, and human viruses. This study showed that infections and illnesses were happening due to pathogens. Human virus in the present study was greater than previous studies at the Lake Michigan beaches. Pathogenic bacteria in the present study showed a greater amount than the previous Great Lake beaches. One thing to do for the future, is replacing the sewer lines with a rubber where the piping connects so that there’s no leakage, and maybe monitoring them as well. For the non-human sources, maybe by having a filtering system to clean out the water before going into rivers and leading to the oceans. This can be some examples, because fish do travel around the ocean and we eat marine life. These pathogens are not just hurting our environment but our marine life, and in the end, us as well.

 

Fig. 1: Fecal Contamination from human and non-human sources. 

Reference:

Corsi SR, Borchardt MA, Carvin RB, Burch TR, Spencer SK, Lutz MA, McDermott CM, et al. 2016. “Human and Bovine Viruses and Bacteria at Three Great Lakes Beaches: Environmental Variable Associations and Health Risk.” Environmental Science & Technology 50 (2): 987–95.