Day 248 - Jan. 30, 2012

lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

1.6 pounds

933.2 pounds total 

My friend Danielle started her own Daily Ocean beach cleanup project after coming out with me in Santa Monica over a year and a half ago. She is doing incredible things! Her focus (although she picks up all trash along her 20 min. cleanup) is cigarette butts. She's collected a whopping 38,585 cigarette butts around her local beaches in Wrightsville N.C.!

Think they need to ban smoking from beaches? 

Good gravy that's a lot of ciggie butts!

Banning smoking on Wrightsville Beaches is coming up for a vote, and you can sign a petition encouraging the Board of Aldermen to do so. 

Please vote to ban cigarette smoking on the beach and then pass on this link through all your channels - email, twitter, FB, you name it. 

Let's get those signatures in! Join Danielle and Surfrider by taking a step in the direction of healthier oceans everywhere, and then pass it on! Thank you. 

In Surfrider's e-newsletter, "SOUP" they highlighted a New York Times article on BP's internal emails revealing they knew full well just how much oil was spilling into the Gulf from the beginning, and they kept it under wraps. I'm not surprised, but I still feel sick to my stomach. 

Here's the link. 

"Soup" (Surfrider) also provided a link to garbage trashing the shores of the Mexican Caribbean. I have seen this first hand having done at least one Daily Ocean cleanup in Tulum, Mexico. 

Seeing the LA Times photographer cover the problem in Mexico, which points to the much larger problem in the ocean, was encouraging. The article goes into more depth on the currents carrying the waste that then spit it up all over "paradise." 

Thank you LA Times for the relevant piece, and for focusing people's attention on ocean health, and the disposable plastics crisis our blue planet faces.