They are both the second plot of five that we counted on the same beach...only separated by 5 months...If you've never heard of tragedy of the commons, check it out here. It is a piece that was published in Science in 1968 and was one of the first things I had to read as part of my ecology class in undergrad. In short it says that when everyone owns something, no one owns it and therefore everyone exploits it. It's a sad statement of truth about our society, and one that you can see in glaring reality at Botany Bay. You may remember my trip to Botany back at the beginning of the year, and my comment on how many shells there were on the beach. It has been a private beach and therefore the shells that washed in from the ocean had not been picked up by random tourists and taken back to random houses in random towns. Now, I am not saying this because I dislike people picking up shells. I have quite a few in my house, but I pick them up if they are particularly nice, or the place means something particularly special to me, and they are not dumped out with the trash when I'm cleaning a room because they have lost their 'newness'. And I most certainly don't take a wagon full of them.
But, back to Botany. We opened up for the public in July and the day after did a shell count because we knew there would be a drastic change before the next time we counted. We saw it happen as adults would carry their twins off the beach so they could fill their double stroller with shells. Or a man who knew only children 17 and under could take shells hid a bag of them under his shirt as he walked past the DNR staff (really, did he think we are blind?). It sounds crazy, but the reason for it is simple - it's a tragedy of the commons. People see the shells and figure, well if I don't take them then the next person who walks on this beach might and if they do then I missed my chance to have it. Now don't get me wrong, the beach still has a ton of shells on it, but they are definitely not the same types of shells that were there before. Just take a look at those pictures. Whereas in our July study a spot of beach 15 ft by 15 ft would have upwards of 40 whelk shells on it, in our December count there were 3 (and all those were broken apart).
This post is not so much me saying that I don't want people taking shells, because I totally support kids collecting shells and putting them in their room and growing up to be a marine biologist (or at least growing up to think the ocean is cool) - hey that's how I got to where I am today. It's really just pointing out how crazy it is that something a guy wrote in 1968 is still SO relevant and yet far from a common topic understood by the societies that exhibit the behaviors. We may want to start adding this to high school biology...
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