Day 349 - Oct 26, 2012

lifeguard tower 26 – Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

.5 pounds collected

1,293.1 pounds to date

7 cigarette butts

There’s a juvenile California Sea Lion in the water with us for the last few weeks. She seems to target the swimmers, and body boarders with fins. The occasional leash tug on a surfer isn’t out of the question, but her interest focuses on those of us who are more submerged than our friends standing on plexiglass. 

I keep my distance, and occasionally scoot behind a friend when she gets too close. She may look cute, but I’ve seen a Stellar Sea Lion skull before, and they’ve got teeth. Why am I telling you this under a photograph of yellow nylon rope?

Marine life entanglement claims millions of animals lives a year from our rubbish. When I picked up this rope I thought at least our playful young sea lion won’t get snared in this. 

Perhaps my example is an idealized benefit from conducting regular beach cleanups. Is it? What if we saw the impacts our modern world had on the natural environment around us in our day-to-day and acted from that place on a global scale?

“YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION, WELL YOU KNOW…

WE ALL WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD.” - BEATLES

Day 348 - Oct. 24th, 2012

lifeguard tower 26, Ocean Park – Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

1.1  pounds

1,292.6 pounds total

5 cigarette butts

Danielle who writes the IT STARTS WITH ME blog is going to do 365 beach cleanups too! I'm so thrilled. We compare how many cigarettes we pick up on our respective beaches in 20 min.. 

Last count for Danielle - 582 cigarettes in 20 min. 

I got 5 on the same day here in Santa Monica. 

Oct. 24^th was my birthday. I got an acupuncture treatment, talked to my best friend from college who lives in Maine, and went out to dinner with my husband and friends. Between acupuncture and dinner I went for a beach cleanup.

“I bet it sounds strange that I’m going to do a beach cleanup on my birthday,” I said to Diane my acupuncturist as I left her office.

“No,” she said, “It’s what you really enjoy doing. Doesn’t sound strange at all.”

Picking up Band-Aids makes my day? No, not that literally, but it recharges me to do something about an issue I care about – clean oceans.

My promise – action feels so much better than inaction. Feeling overwhelmed when you hear about the trash accumulating in our oceans? 

Could you cleanup your neighborhood even if you live far from the sea?

 Because as Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Center said at Santa Monica College this week, “The ocean is downhill from everything and everything rolls downhill.”

AND EVERY ACTION MATTERS