By Joe Johnson

Note: This week I have asked Virginia Beach lifeguard Joe Johnson if I could run his great email to me as a guest Nature Notes column.

I have always felt truly thankful for our lifeguards who are at the ready to save human lives and so much more, but I never thought that our lifeguards also are helping to save the environment too! Read on!

Good Afternoon Mary Reid,

My name is Joe Johnson and I have been an oceanfront lifeguard in Virginia Beach for longer than I care to say. I keep coming back because of the community, the tan, and the beach. At the footer of the newsletter concerning the woodpecker I saw that I can reach out and tell a story about people doing some good things in our community.

While it is not a specific event/story I wanted to share that the lifeguards at the beach are very big environmentalists. We hate to see our beach get dirty, when we see bottles, glass, and plastic on our beach we pick it up. My personal ire comes from the Styrofoam that trickles out of the cheap boogie boards and down the beach. Often patrons don’t realize that their board is broken and the plastic fabric shell is ripped.

The Lifeguards are the first people to call the stranding team when we see marine life in trouble at the beach. We love it when we get to experience (from a safe distance) the fact that we work next to a living ocean. I can say that since I started (before 2020) there has been an increase in bait balls of fish, dolphins, ospreys, sharks, but a decrease in pigeons, red tides, sand plovers, and Atlantic Sand Crabs. Instances of run off bacteria that force us to close the beach have remained about the same. I admit this tally is mostly from my own personal witness.

I have nothing further to say other than to tell you that you have a group of young hardworking people who are passionate about their environment. I will be at the Brock Environmental Center this Tuesday to hear about tree canopies (see below). I hope to meet some more LRN members there!

Best,

Joe Johnson

Heartfelt thanks to Joe Johnson and all the Virginia Beach lifeguards with the Virginia Beach Lifesaving Service!

“Cooling Our Cities with Tree Canopy,” one of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Climate Lecture Series, is from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Brock Center. Find out more:  https://events.cbf.org/treecanopy”