For a few weeks, beachgoers, fishermen, including young children, have been plagued by an unnatural plaque of wet and dry and dirt-infested seaweed all along the seashore, from the Strandfontein pavilion in the direction of Muizenberg where upgrade construction is taking place.
Myself, and many educated beach visitors are fully aware that seaweed on the beaches is a natural phenomenon. It gets washed up on the seashore and sands, where all kinds of organisms and insects feed.
When the high tides come, that seaweed filled with micro-organisms and insects is feed for fish and other sea creatures.
But what is happening at Strandfontein is nature gone haywire, with global warming, to a certain extent, to blame.
In bygone years the seaweed came and then left but this time the seaweed is static and going in and out of the sea causing a danger to persons in the water as the seaweed becomes like a massive net. I have seen children being dragged in by this ever-increasing unnatural increase of seaweed.
The seaweed is contaminated with dirty plastics, fishing lines and by not moving away it is polluting the sea.
Myself and many fishermen are losing expensive fishing tackle by this unnatural phenomenon.
The seaweed has to be removed as a cleansing priority so one and all can enjoy the beach and the sea and, of course, the seashore.
* Keith Alfred Adolph Blake, Ottery.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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