-- but the buildup of trash is.

That is the opinion of the man in charge of beach clean-up, senior superintendent of Parks, Martin Brown.

"It's a sign of a healthy ocean, really,'' Mr. Brown said while being interviewed on a separate subject. "We should be encouraged by the amount of seaweed we are seeing.'' While Mr. Brown admitted the seaweed was unsightly, he repeated Government's position that it was a perfectly natural part of the Island's ecosystem, serving to bind sand together to make the beach in the first place.

Mr. Brown said his crews had found there was less tar and oil washing up on the beaches this season, but he said plastics and other man-made flotsam were more of a concern.

"If you take a core sample and went down to rock you would find layers of seaweed in between layer upon layer of sand,'' he said. "Without the weeds, the sand and the dunes are susceptible to the hydraulic action of the waves.

"After all that damage from Hurricane Gert and two other hurricanes within a six-week period last summer, we are actually where I thought we would be in four or five months time. The seaweed is rebuilding our beaches. It is the trash that's disturbing.'' Directly responding to a story in The Royal Gazette yesterday about visitors complaining about trash at several Warwick beaches, Mr. Brown said all of the Island's beaches for which he was responsible had been cleaned in the days after January 6.