Pebble Beach aims to stay harmful footballs out of ocean

(Reuters) – Pebble Beach Golf Links, which hosts the U.S. Open recently, hopes the world’s best golfers keep their balls on your fairways and outside the sensitive coastal waters, which has been overwhelmed by decades of sphere pollution.

The Pebble Beach Company has made reducing the group of balls that achieve the ocean a priority, posting signs letting players however levels know not to hit within the water and sending divers to help collect any errant balls.

The extent belonging to the environmental problem was initially identified three years ago by teenager Alex Weber after she stumbled on something she had never seen before while diving in California – a white sea floor.

“It turned out just blanketed within this mess of balls,” she told Reuters this month. “Seeing the vast scale of pollution from this type of identifiable source forced me to be wonder why no-one was doing anything about it.”

So Weber took matters into her own hands, first by gaining the balls and be able to connecting having a researcher at Stanford University who suggested they collaborate in a scientific research paper.

They left on to publish the main paper about golf ball marine pollution, which got a person’s eye of the National Marine Sanctuary and officials at the course itself.

In February the Pebble Beach Company provided to conduct about 200 underwater clean ups year after year for five-years or until a “dramatic shift” can be looked at in the underwater environment.

“We’d no idea precisely what would become after this started,” said Weber, 19, who recently completed her second year at California’s Cabrillo College, where she studies environmental science.

“It’s all joining together.”

FOOD CHAIN AFFECTED

Golf balls understand into the marine environment fairly easily considering that the famed course sits for the Pacific Ocean.

No one is sure how many balls are under the waves but Weber’s research estimated there’s between two and 5 million in Pebble Beach’s Stillwater Cove area alone.

Each ball will be the equivalent to the mass of seven plastic grocery bags or three plastic water bottles, she said.

The balls are bad for the environment because as they break down, some to push out core these include about 300 yards of stretched rubber, that may be wound around a lesser ball at its core.

The rubber floats to your surface, mixing together with the kelp although cover disintegrates into smaller shards of plastic, which are eaten by plankton besides other marine life.

“They promote the micro-plastics problem, getting in the food chain and consequently into us,” she said.

Solid core balls do not release rubber but include toxic chemicals designed to kill aquatic life when considering in contact with them, she said.

The problem extends beyond Pebble Beach. Ocean and riverside courses all add up to golf ball pollution, she said.

Weber said she hoped the Pebble Beach Company would serve as an example for other courses.

“It absolutely was really excited to observe that they’ve taken those initial steps and hopefully they develop into a leader through the golf industry – showing other courses find out how to run their sustainability programs,” she said.

In the meantime, Weber has big plans for ones 50,000 balls she has collected along with the Plastic Pick-Up, an environmental organization she founded.

“We’re building a 30-foot long barreling golf ball wave that folks can attractive, stand on a surf board and try to get barreled in trash,” she added.

The transportable sculpture are going to be displayed at different surfing events, concerts and festivals to awareness with regard to the issue.