Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Day 363 - Dec. 3, 2012




lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
7 pounds
1,329.1 pounds total

9 cigarette butts



TIP #2 TO HELP THE OCEAN - Curious about an environmental problem? 
Learn more about it and tell your friends and family. 



I asked people in a recent photo giveaway what they would like to see the Daily Ocean do that it's not currently doing. One reply was for the Daily Ocean to learn more about storm water runoff, what the city does about it, and take some action around this issue. 

Today I met with the Office of the Environment and Sustainability here in Santa Monica for an overview of what our city does to prevent pollutants, seen and unseen, from entering 
the Santa Monica Bay. 


The short answer is that they do a lot. I saw one of the catch basins or CDS systems that traps trash from the busy downtown shopping district before it goes into the bay. There was plenty of plastics and polystrene containers floating on top of some pretty dirty water. I'm going back in the next week or so for a longer tour. After that I'll cover more about what I learned in an entire post dedicated to the topic.


But for now I'll leave with a reminder for this post's TIP TO HELP THE OCEAN. 

TIP #2 TO HELP THE OCEAN - Curious about an environmental problem? 
Learn more about it and tell your friends and family. 


I've learned so much about the larger issues surrounding beach cleanups because once I saw the trash on the sand I became curious about the bigger issues. There are great non-profit organizations like our local Heal the Bay to help me understand how these issues tie together. A beach cleanup is a great place for me to start and come back to, but ultimately an invitation to engage further with ocean conservation in whatever way you I drawn to do that.