It\u2019s cleanup day for the Miami Police Marine Patrol unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of a dual-purpose cleanup, we\u2019re focusing on the environment but also removing a navigational hazard out there,\u201d Major Alex Valdes explained.<\/p>\n
A team of divers and other members of the unit left the dock at Dinner Key and headed out into Biscayne Bay, looking for debris to remove, and they found plenty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be removing any debris or any trash that\u2019s unwanted, right, so it helps out the environment, helps out the marine life, but it also helps out the boaters as well,\u201d Valdes said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team quickly zeroed in on an abandoned, capsized pontoon boat.<\/p>\n
I asked a boater at the dock what he thought of the police effort to remove derelict vessels from the waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a great thing, about time they do something about it, it\u2019s been too long,\u201d said Alex Gort as he hauled his boat out onto his trailer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pontoon boat was floating just below the surface, an obvious danger to boaters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo after sunset, before sunrise, can\u2019t see anything out here, it\u2019s pitch black, so it causes a navigational hazard to other boat operators that do not know that this vessel is underneath the water,\u201d Lt. Corey Couto said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t see \u2018em never, not even half the time, you can never see \u2018em,\u201d Gort said, speaking about abandoned boats and boat parts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the bay is littered with them. Using a lift bag inflated with air, the Miami Police team raised the pontoon boat up and was able to tow it to the dock. In an average year, state and local authorities remove 600 abandoned boats across Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJust alone in the city of Miami, we do have a major derelict vessel issue,\u201d Couto said. \u201cWe have about 23 derelict vessels that we currently are tracking.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a simple process to remove an abandoned boat. Police first have to find the owner and determine if the vessel is, indeed, abandoned. If you see what you suspect is a derelict vessel, report it to police to get the removal process started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s cleanup day for the Miami Police Marine Patrol unit.\u00a0 \u201cKind of a dual-purpose cleanup, we\u2019re focusing on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-286866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}