BOCA RATON, Fla. – The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said charges are imminent for two teenagers who were on board a boat when they were caught on camera dumping garbage into the ocean in South Florida.
The incident happened about a mile and a half offshore from the Boca Raton Inlet.
The video was captured and published by Wavy Boats, a social media content creator — and it has sparked quite an outrage among the public.
The video shows a boat with at least 10 young people, and some of them are seen dumping garbage into the ocean, leaving a trail behind.
Watch the full video below:
The teens were leaving an event called Boca Bash 2024, the unofficial kick-off to the boating season.
Advocates for clean beaches and waterways were outraged after watching the video.
“It makes me sad, it makes me disappointed, I just know education is the key. We have to keep educating these kids and make them understand their voices do matter,” Executive Director of Beaches Go Green Anne Marie Moquin, said.
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Moquin and her team with Beaches Go Green come out to our local beaches and pick up garbage regularly.
The biggest concern is that if people keep dumping stuff into the ocean, it could end up on shore.
Far beyond the coast, there are garbage patches, called gyres. These systems circulate ocean currents and are a common place to find garbage.
But that garbage can also end up closer to home.
Lisa Rinaman with the St. Johns Riverkeeper said volunteers have already picked up approximately 18,000 pounds of trash and 121 tires from our waterways this year.
Rinaman saw the video as well and was disappointed.
“When you dump trash into the ocean or into the waterways it breaks down and wildlife, our fisheries, they’ll eat the trash. it can get into the food web and studies show that plastic is in our food web already, we have plastic in our bodies, and it comes from littering and getting it into our ocean and into our rivers,” Rinaman said.
Since the trashy incident, volunteers have been working to clean up the mess.