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The Effects Of Paddling Through The Water

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Paddling through the water, I suddenly felt a sticky substance on the sole of my foot. Massive amounts of tar had washed up on my local beach and I managed to get a large piece wrapped around my foot. This past summer I have seen an absurd amount of tar on beaches in southern California. I grew up occasionally using baby oil to scrub tar off my foot after a long day at the beach, but never in my life have I seen tar balls create a barrier between the sand and the sea. Tar balls, or tar patties, are oil-containing substances formed from both oil spills as well as from naturally occurring sources in the ocean floor. When oil floats to the ocean surface, a process called weathering breaks the oil up into smaller patches. Chemical and …show more content…

However, I believe that there are ways we can sustainably recycle tar, especially from our beaches. In this paper, I will explore already established ways to recycle beach tar, as well as offer my own proposals. When I see tar, I immediately think of oil. Therefore, I always wondered why we could not extract oil from tar balls and use it. According to The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited, once oil sits in the ocean too long, it becomes contaminated with salt, sediments, and other materials that make it unusable. However, are there ways to extract the oil from the tar and leave behind the other organic materials? Oil should not be wasted because it is a non-renewable energy (Troisi, Barton, and Bexton 2016). Tar balls are always collected and then dumped into a landfill, buried, or incinerated. Current disposal methods move the pollution from the sea into the air and drinking water sources. In 2010 in Mississippi, tar balls covered local beaches from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill by BP. Pressure from community officials forced the Mississippi attorney to reach out for possible solutions. Several companies responded with innovative ideas. One local engineering firm proposed the use of a sand agitator to extract the sand from the oil, making the sand returnable to the beach and the oil sellable (Ho 2010). Another company called Hydra-tone Chemicals, proposed the use of safe coconut

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