The unexpected consequences of sex on the beach

Cleaning the beaches and preserving the local ecosystem is a constant concern of the local authorities in many coastal countries. However, it sometimes takes on strange forms.

In the Danish city of Slagelse, local residents rebelled, accusing the authorities of useless actions and a waste of budget funds. They were outraged by the “idiotic” way of cleaning the area with a tractor on Stillinge Beach. The machine diligently collected garbage and seaweed, and then no less diligently … dumped them into the sea. The work process was presented in a video published by the TV channel DR…

Environmentalists and ordinary people could not contain their indignation. Each year, the municipality allocates $ 150,000 for the maintenance of the bulldozer, but these costs can hardly be called justified. Thorkel Gissel Nielsen, a professor at the Danish Technical Institute, did not hesitate to call the beach cleaning system “absolutely idiotic.”

Catherine Richardson, professor of biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen, fully agrees with him. She believes that all the waste and algae thrown into the sea will end up on the shore anyway, but the regular disturbance of the sand cover will have an extremely negative effect on living organisms and plants.

Willum Christensen, deputy mayor of Slagelse, explains in his defense that the authorities want to make the coastline as clean and pleasant for beach goers as in the Canary Islands and Mallorca. In his opinion, the tractor does not dump large pieces of plastic into the sea, and small particles of debris and cigarette butts will in any case fall into the water.

Meanwhile, scientists have recently discovered that romantic sex on the beach can be detrimental to coastal nature. In the course of the study, 300 sites for intimate relations, especially popular among the population, were studied in the Maspalomas Nature Reserve in the Canary Islands. Scientists have discovered that rare plant species and unique animals have fallen prey to beach romance. And the culprit is trampled grass, many cigarette butts and discarded contraceptives.

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