One of the best things Miami-Dade County does is

April’s annual Baynanza shoreline cleanup on Biscayne Bay, scheduled this year for Saturday morning, April 26.

Thousands of volunteers will remove ton upon ton of trash, refuse, rubbish and jetsam found on beaches, adrift along bulkheads and snagged among the roots of mangroves.

The worst part, many volunteers have found over the years, is having to quit at noon because there’s still so much garbage out there. All the same, the experience is likely to leave you feeling satisfied and maybe even a little bit noble.

Baynanza, now in its 32nd year, is organized by DERM, the county environmental agency. Related events began in mid-March, a few having little or no direct con- nection to what’s primarily a celebration of the bay and its natural beauty.

The shoreline cleanup is the highlight. School classes, civic organizations, boating and fishing groups and individual people acting on their own will swarm to 23 sites spread from Oleta River State Park at the north end to Biscayne National and Homestead Bayfront Parks at the south end.

Why? To pick up trash and stuff it in plastic bags — domestic drudgery at home but somehow emotionally and socially rewarding, even noble here. The school kids get community service credits too. If you want to participate, it’s somewhat important to register online no later than Friday, April 4, picking your first and second choices from the list of 23 locations.

Boat owners are always needed to ferry people to the island sites, and Baynanza promises not to turn your gleaming vessel into a garbage scow.

If you blow the deadline you won’t be turned away, but you will risk crowding a site that already has more people than needed. You’ll also probably miss out on get- ting a Baynanza T-shirt.

The shirt’s always a witty, strikingly good work of art designed by some little kid of whom you have every right to be jealous. This year it’s by Sofia Flores, who’s in fifth grade at Royal Green Elementary School in Miami-Dade.

Therefore, waste no time. Look for links to the regis- tration form, calendar of events, boat captaincy and other details: www.miamidade.gov/environment/baynanza.asp.

Finders keepers

Catch and release fishing-doers are luckier than limit- takers. It’s not that they catch more fish, no, but they don’t have to sweat changing closed and open seasons, or care about size and bag limits, or know if they’re in state or federal waters or bother with all the other stuff that keeps being added to state and federal regulations.

Except circle hooks. Pretty soon you’ll have to use those — straight inline circle hooks, not offset, and no stainless steel — when catching red snapper and nine other reef species in state waters of the Gulf of Mexico — but not if you’re fishing in Monroe County.

That and much more is according to new regulations scheduled for enactment by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission on Wednesday, April 16, in Tallahassee.

First, the state red snapper season: This year’s will be 52 days, beginning on May 24, the Saturday before Memorial Day. It will close at midnight Monday, July 14.

Our wall calendar says that is “Pandemonium Day,” maybe just a coincidence. Break the word down and you can figure out it means demons are running around loose, everywhere.

The 40-day federal season starts June 1 and goes through July 10. It could end earlier if NOAA, which is in charge of federal fisheries, figures out that the quota for the season is reached sooner than July 10, or later if it won’t be met by then. Federal waters in the Gulf start 9 miles offshore.

Next, the size and bag limits: Red snappers’ minimum keeper size is 16 inches, total length. You can keep two like that on a trip. Your limit for all kinds of snapper, including the two reds, is 10 per day.

We’ll also be required to have and use a de-hooking device. First thing that comes to mind is one of those metal rods with a curly end, but FWC says needle-nose pliers also qualify as a de-hooker. You can buy some fairly long, thin ones.

By way of justification, here’s a little background:

Fish scientists report it’s important to turn loose the larger snappers, especially reds, because the bigger females produce so many more eggs: it takes 212 of them at 17 inches (about 5 years old) to make as many as a single 24-incher, age about 8.

Circle hooks will be required because they give carefully released fish a lot better chance of survival than J-shaped hooks. Circle hooks seldom snag in a fish’s innards even if they’re swallowed.

Correct technique: Don’t jerk-set the circle hook. Just reel your line tight and back the hook comes until it reaches the fish’s mouth, where it usually snags at the hinge of the jaw. It won’t work on the little ones that nibble your bait off the hook a quarter-inch at a time, but you don’t want those anyway.

There is more of this to know than there’s space to print it, so get the rest online at http://myfwc.com/fishing/salt- water/recreational/snappers/gulf-red- snapper.

Spring fever for horseshoe crabs

There are lots of interesting sights on the beaches this month and no, they’re not just the ones in bikinis. Horseshoe crabs are mating. Sea turtles are supposed to continue the nesting and egg- laying project they began in March and might continue into October.

The crab show invites audience participation. FWC would like you to keep score of what you see and turn in your card — like a golfer, but with a lot more detail.

Don’t feel guilty if it will take more work than you feel like doing to give FWC what it wants:

“Beachgoers lucky enough to spot horseshoe crabs are asked to note how many they see and whether the horse- shoe crabs are mating. If possible, the ob- server should also count how many horseshoe crabs are mating adults and how many are juveniles (4 inches wide or smaller).

“In addition, biologists ask observers to provide the date, time, location, habitat type and environmental conditions — such as tides and moon phase — when a sighting occurs.”

The best times to watch are near high tide just before, during or after a full moon or new moon.

Here’s an even more exciting part: April’s full moon, at 3:43 a.m. on Tuesday, April 15, happens right in the middle of a lunar eclipse that begins at 12:55 a.m. and lasts until 4:23. If you’re staying up late anyway to finish your income tax return, the stress relief potential is great.

It may add to the fun to see whether the mating crabs call time out during the eclipse, and to wonder whether they are watching it too.

Our wall calendar says, no kidding, that in addition to tax day, April 15 is “Rubber Eraser Day.” We looked that up and learned that someone named Joseph Priestly invented the rubber eraser in 1770. Hyman Lipman patented the idea of attaching it to a pencil in 1858. Where? In Philadelphia, Pencilvania.

Another prime time for crab mating spectators is the new moon phase beginning at 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday, April 29. The same wonderful calendar tells us that is “Dance Day.”

What about timing the tides? Check the Waterfront Times tide charts. If your favorite beach isn’t shown, there are lots of other places to look. Try the Captain Mel fishing e-zine at www.capmel.com.

Prepare for your horseshoe crab ex- perience at www.myfwc.com/contact and look for the “Horseshoe Crab Nesting Activity” link in the right-hand column. You can download a scorecard there.

The state already has about 2,500 trained volunteers monitoring turtle nesting, so the rest of us can go to the beach, stand respectfully out of the way and watch.

Leatherbacks started nesting first, in March on beaches from Broward to Brevard County. As the season goes on, there should be plenty of loggerheads and green turtles crawling ashore.

Loggerheads are the most abundant, with Florida getting about 90 percent of their nestings in the southeastern states. The last couple of years have been spec- tacular, with more Florida loggerhead nests in 2012 than ever before and more green turtle nests in 2013 than ever before.

If you don’t see turtles coming ashore, you can tell where they’ve been by the crawl marks they leave on the sand and the egg stashes marked by stakes and yellow tape.

FWC’s website has a vast amount of turtle information including pictures. Start at www.MyFWC.com/SeaTurtle and save time for a look at NOAA’s turtle migration routes here: www.fisheries.noaa.gov/sto- ries/2014/03/3_11_14seaturtle_migra- tionroute_revealed.html.