1. Beaches

Category Archives: Beaches

12 UAE beaches to receive Blue Flag

Posted on by

Dubai: As many as 12 beaches in the UAE are set to receive the internationally recognised Blue Flag a voluntary eco-label awarded to more than 3,850 beaches and marinas in 48 countries around the globe.

The Emirates Wildlife Society, in association with WWF (EWS-WWF), yesterday announced that 12 beaches in Abu Dhabi and Dubai met the 32 criteria dealing with water quality, environmental education and information, environmental management, and safety and other services.

The Blue Flag is a highly prestigious and well-recognised symbol and serves to highlight coastal excellence internationally so for the UAE to now have an additional 12 Blue Flags awarded is a real achievement for the country. This news is very positive and places the UAE as a leader in the Blue Flag programme regionally, said Lisa Perry, Programmes Director at Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS)-World Wide Fund (WWF).

Since the pilot phase in 2011, the EWS-WWF team has been working with authorities and stakeholders to raise environmental standards of beaches and marinas nationwide. With these newly awarded sites listed below, the UAE now boasts a total of 24 Blue Flags across the emirates.

In Abu Dhabi, the Blue Flag beaches are at Al Bateen Marina, The Club beach, Sadiyat Island beach, Lagoon beach, Phase 2 beach, Hilton beach, Le Meridien, and Desert Islands on Sir Bani Yas

In Dubai, the Blue Flags will be erected on the beaches at Jumeirah Beach Hotel Marina, Jumeirah Beach Hotel beach, Le Royal Meridien beach, and the Sheraton Dubai Jumeirah Beach Resort beach.

Being able to award 12 more beaches and marinas with the Blue Flag across the UAE this year is very encouraging. It is the result of the hard work, commitment and determination put in by the site managers in each of the locations and will greatly benefit not only the conservation and protection of the UAEs coastline, but will also help to boost tourism, said Moaz Sawaf, Blue Flag Project Manager at EWS-WWF.

These newly awarded sites join a global list of more than 4,000 beaches and marinas across 46 different countries, from the tropical shores of the Caribbean islands to the rugged cliffs of New Zealand.

Go here to read the rest:

12 UAE beaches to receive Blue Flag

Dogs poisoned by slug bait on Auckland beaches

Posted on by

Dog owners at some of Auckland's most popular beaches are baffled as to why anyone would lay deadly slug bait indiscriminately in a public area.

At least seven dogs have suffered seizures which are suspected to have been the result of eating the poison while walking at Kohimarama and St Heliers beaches in east Auckland.

Kohimarama Veterinary Clinic has sent a mass email to its clients warning them not to take their dogs to the beaches, after six dogs were treated for severe shaking leading to seizures; symptoms indicating they had eaten slug bait.

The dogs developed symptoms six to eight hours after visiting the beaches and required immediate treatment, the email said.

The clinic advised people to avoid taking their dogs to the beaches until the issue had been resolved.

Abbotts Way Veterinary Clinic in nearby Remuera confirmed that about two weeks ago they had also treated a dog thought to have been poisoned by metaldehyde - the active ingredient in slug bait.

While unable to go into specific details, nurse Yani Riley said the dog was thought to have been on one of the beaches prior to presenting at the clinic "tremoring and seizuring".

Treating dogs for metaldehyde poisoning mostly just involved supportive care and trying to keep them as calm as possible.

"With the seizuring they also tend to overheat so it's important they're kept cool ... with towels and things," she said.

Auckland Council media advisor Lydia Blatch the council had been alerted to the reports. "There have been no new cases since Tuesday and all dogs are recovering."

Excerpt from:

Dogs poisoned by slug bait on Auckland beaches

Overnight Ocracoke and Hatteras beaches and landmarks closed

Posted on by

Posted on: 9:29 pm, October 1, 2013, by Alix Bryan, updated on: 10:28pm, October 1, 2013

Photo via the Island Free Press, taken by Don Bowers and Connie Leinbach.

Blue skies and mid-70s temperatures have the makings of a lovely day at the beach. Although summer weather might be sounding its last hurrah, and it might have been the perfect day to enjoy the beach at Hatteras and Ocracoke, most of the beaches were closed to the public due to the federal government shutdown.

The shutdown officially began at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday andby daylight Park Service personnel were already erecting barricades and chaining ocean and soundside beaches, according to the Island Free Press.

Here is what is open and closed on the national seashore, based on info from the Island Free Press :

In Pea Island and other refuges visitor centers are closed and public access is not allowed on the beaches and trails.

In a news release today refuge manager Mike Bryant explained further, This means all public uses of these national wildlife refuges cease completely no hunting or fishing even hunts for which people have been issued special permits, like the Pungo Hunt scheduled for this week.

It means no birdwatching, no walking on the beaches or trails, and no driving to see bears. It means that these federally-owned lands are closed. The closure also includes Visitor Centers and offices. For refuge employees, it means no work. No checking e-mails, no posting on web pages, no management activities, and no public programs on or off the refuge. The few Refuge staff we have working will be limited to activities that protect of life and property or communications internally concerning the closure.

Store owners report frustration from visitors and residents alike.

People have to get creative about water access, and in Ocracoke need to know someone with private sound-side access. The 16 miles of beach and all of the soundside access not in Ocracoke village are on National Park Service land.

The rest is here:

Overnight Ocracoke and Hatteras beaches and landmarks closed

Scarborough would ban unleashed dogs on beaches under agreement

Posted on by

Posted:Today Updated: 1:03 AM The Town Council plans to consider changes in response to a dog killing a rare bird in July.

By Dennis Hoey dhoey@pressherald.com Staff Writer

SCARBOROUGH Unleashed dogs would be banned from town beaches during the spring and summer months if the Town Council endorses changes to its animal control and piping plover ordinances.

click image to enlarge

Elvis and Jakey frolic in the surf at Pine Point in Scarborough on Saturday, July 27, 2013. The Scarborough Town Council will decide Oct. 2 whether to ban unleashed dogs from the town's beaches during the spring and summer.

Carl D. Walsh / Staff Photographer

click image to enlarge

An adult plover stands close by a nesting plover chick.

Photo by Amanda Reed / Maine Audubon

The council will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Town Hall to decide whether it should settle a dispute with the federal government that began during the early morning hours of July 15 after an unleashed dog killed an endangered piping plover chick on Pine Point Beach.

Visit link:

Scarborough would ban unleashed dogs on beaches under agreement

Global Warming Eats Sandy Beaches

Posted on by

Beaches are far more than just places to hang out and enjoy the ocean. They are also buffers that take the brunt of crashing waves and save the land behind the beach, where people live and work, from being washed away. A new study has taken a stab at figuring out just how much land we could lose this century due to sea level rise, how many people will be forced to move and how much it will all cost. It also looks at what could happen if we try and fight back by artificially adding sand to beaches.

Across the...scenarios (we) considered, large areas of land could be lost if there is no adaptation," explained Jochen Hinkel of the Global Climate Forum in Berlin, Germany and first author on the new paper published in the journal Global and Planetary Change. "This paper presents a first assessment of the global effects of climate-induced sea-level rise on the erosion of sandy beaches and the loss of land that, in turn, forces people to move.

The five countries that will be most affected by land loss by 2100 are the United States, Australia, Mexico, Russian Federation and Brazil. These countries all have a long coastlines and lots of sandy beaches. As might be expected, four of these countries are among the top five countries in terms of their total length of sandy beaches: Australia (8,200 miles or 13,200 km), United States (8,000 miles, or 12,800 km), Brazil (3,800 miles, 6,100 km), Denmark (2,900 miles, 4,600 km) and Mexico (3,000 miles 4,900 km).

The team used six global mean sea-level rise scenarios for the 21st century, ranging from 0.2 to 0.8 meters, and six socio-economic scenarios. They also looked at what could happen with and without beach nourishment programs, like those that keep tourists coming to beaches in Florida.

Without beach nourishment, global loss of land could be 6,000 to 17,000 square kilometers (2,300 to 6,600 square miles) during the 21st century. If you packed all that land loss together, the area is comparable to the entire state of Delaware up to the entire state Hawaii. Spread out globally, however, that erosion would lead to the forced migration of between 1.6 and 5.3 million people at a cost of between $300 billion and $1 trillion, the researchers report.

The good news is that bringing in more sand, a process called beach nourishment, could really help. Some eight to 14 percent less land might be lost and 56 to 68 percent fewer people would have to move in this century. That could reduce the cost of forced migration by about 80 percent; bringing the financial burden of moving people to somewhere between $60 to $200 billion.

In terms of absolute costs, the five countries most affected would be the United States, Japan, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. But if you read that in terms of a country's overall human displacement costs, Kiribati, The Marshall Islands and Tuvalu pop to the top of the list.

Beyond the scope of the study, but related to it are the effects of beach losses on wildlife -- something of concern to sea turtle advocates, for instance.

"It's interesting that the Climate Action Plan by (Southeast) Florida counties (the best Sea Level Rise adoption effort to date in Florida) does not even mention beaches," noted Gary Appelson, policy coordinator for the Sea Turtle Conservancy. That said, sea turtles really don't need the wide beaches that humans prefer.

"Sea turtles do fine on high energy, very narrow beaches," Appelson said. "The problem is when we line these beaches with structures and infrastructure and the beach looses resiliency to recover from storm events." Just how that plays out in beach nourishment scenarios remains to be seen.

More:

Global Warming Eats Sandy Beaches

The World’s Beaches Rebels / La Barceloneta [Barcelona] Trashmen [ H. A. Schult ] – Video

Posted on by


The World #39;s Beaches Rebels / La Barceloneta [Barcelona] Trashmen [ H. A. Schult ]
_video by puigreixach [ puigreixach@gmail.com / http://www.puigreixach.net ] La playa, ese maravilloso lugar al que recurrimos cada verano. Y, sin embargo, ¡qué poc...

By: J. Puig Reixach

See the article here:

The World's Beaches Rebels / La Barceloneta [Barcelona] Trashmen [ H. A. Schult ] - Video

Beaches in Rye need attention

Posted on by

September 30, 2013 2:00 AM

Who would have thought a day at the beach could raise such angst, but even with summer over, there are many concerns about who uses the beach and how, if they have a dog with them, whether they surf, and where they park.

It's enough to ask, can't we all just get along?

There are legitimate concerns with the beaches in Rye. Public consumption of alcohol can lead to other problems, especially littering, and there seems to be a growing amount of trash left on our fine shores. That's a shame.

An ounce of prevention, as it relates to open containers, and trash, is worth a pound of prevention. With respect to the law, a discreetly consumed beer is not going to turn Rye's shores into a honky-tonk Hampton Beach of the 1970s. The problem arises when a beer becomes public intoxication. It worsens when the publicly intoxicated care not to clean up their mess. Arriving at the beach to find crushed beer cans, cigarette butts and snack food wrappers blowing over what should be pristine sands is depressing.

Let's not just blame those who imbibe. Litter seems to get worse by the year in general. It's frustrating given the greatest level of environmental awareness in the history of the world.

The occasional person who strips out of beach or surf wear to put on other clothes, revealing partial nudity, does little to enhance a family beach trip. We would assume those who swap clothes shoreside are but a few among the tens of thousands who hit the beach on beautiful summer days.

It is the tens of thousands who visit the beach that make us worry what the angst is all about. There is no easy solution to the beach's popularity as there are a lot more of us living in the region than 20 years ago.

We believe a measured approach to restricting and/or charging for parking is needed. When so many of us fight against waning access to waterfront and beaches, further restricting access is troubling. A recent meeting held by local state lawmakers in Rye included worries about the growing number of pedestrians and traffic congestion along the shore.

Among the ideas for dealing with parking and congestion was to install parking meters on Ocean Boulevard and ban parking on one side of the road. State Sen. Nancy Stiles confirmed state law would allow Rye to install parking meters along Ocean Boulevard if it so chooses.

View post:

Beaches in Rye need attention

Bed and Breakfast | +64 368 6766 | Levin Manawatu, Horowhenua | 5510 | beaches – Video

Posted on by


Bed and Breakfast | +64 368 6766 | Levin Manawatu, Horowhenua | 5510 | beaches
Experience Kiwi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZBg1fjeBfQ heartland hospitality on the Nature Coast - a place to stop, relax and take your time. Chris ...

By: Chris Lloyd

Here is the original post:

Bed and Breakfast | +64 368 6766 | Levin Manawatu, Horowhenua | 5510 | beaches - Video

Hospitality | +64 368 6766 | Levin Manawatu, Horowhenua | beaches | birdlife – Video

Posted on by


Hospitality | +64 368 6766 | Levin Manawatu, Horowhenua | beaches | birdlife
Experience Kiwi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWsvmIk9ZsI heartland hospitality on the Nature Coast - a place to stop, relax and take your time. Chris ...

By: Chris Lloyd

Originally posted here:

Hospitality | +64 368 6766 | Levin Manawatu, Horowhenua | beaches | birdlife - Video


  1. Beaches