lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
11.9 pounds
895.7 pounds total
I felt relieved for sitting out this morning from my usual body surfing routine when I weighed my bag, discovering that I collected 11.9 pounds of plastic garbage off the beach tonight. The tide brought in the contents of the storm drain for me to see. This is only one of many intact plastic bags found on the sand.
The stunning sunset created a sharp contrast to the garbage strewn across the beach.
The funny, or not-so-funny, thing is that when I found the condom last night with Kitt and Anna, Kitt said the worst item he could think of finding would be a used diaper. DA-DAAAA!
A woman stopped to talk to me and say thanks for collecting trash after the rain. She commented on how much there was on a night like this. I agreed. She asked me how I don't get discouraged? My only answer was that doing something about it felt a whole lot better than not.
Christy also mentioned a bunch of pictures of local dead birds she's seen walking on the beach between Rose Ave. in Venice and the pier. She wants to put them online somehow because recently she's found a few with fishing hooks in their beaks.
I walked past this Greeb bird on the way back to the car. I normally wouldn't snap a picture of a dead bird, but when I saw this Greeb, and in the light of my recent conversation with Christy, I realized that I've seen a hawk, a sea gull, and 3 Greebs in the last month an a half washed up on my little stretch of sand between 26 and 28. All of them look like they died of natural causes.
But did they? Or did they ingest a bunch of single-use plastic garbage that's been floating around?
Who can tell, except in made me pause...
