Adventures in Video Blogging - Day 118

For the few of you who read Day 118 listed below, I apologize for the repetition.

I am just so excited that I finally figured out how to upload video to YouTube,

and then to my blog.

I know, I know...a fifth grader could do that in half an hour,

well let me tell you that before I thought of The Daily Ocean, I never would

have thought I'd become a blogger. I still don't have Face book, etc. What's the saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention." I feel that way about navigating the world of social media. So to me, this is a feat!

Come on a Daily Ocean Cleanup with me.

The three videos that follow are the beginning, middle and end of Day 118, May 4th 2010.

Day 83 - Dec. 14

life guard station 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

estimated pounds of trash collected today - 3

estimated pounds of trash collected to date - 363.07

community count -

Day 9 of 365

pounds collected by Kirsten - 2.06

total pounds collected to date - 109.15

This was my view while I was waiting for Kirsten to arrive. Not bad, huh?

Many of you know about the Climate Conference in Copenhagen right now. Here is a great link to see what they have been discussing in terms of the oceans. Sea levels on the rise, ocean acidification, and other pressing problems facing us that tie into the health of our oceans.

"A new website, the Ocean Climate Forum (www.oceanclimate.org), will be released on Oceans Day, December 14. This valuable resource for members of the world ocean community introduces some of the issues linked toclimate change in the ocean and ocean acidification, and further gives options for responding to these impacts, including a special section for decision-makers."

Above is a video sent to me from Lisa Boyle, one of the founders of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Here is a

link to their website for more information on the video and a very eloquent summary of the

problem of Plastic Pollution by another founding member of the PPC, Manuel Maqueda.
Heal the Bay attended a hearing on banning trash from the LA River. They were successful.

Here is a link to the story in the LA Times!

Water board moves to enforce ban on trash in L.A. River

Cities along the watershed are required by 2016 to keep all trash out of their storm drains. Those that don't comply will now be in violation of the federal Clean Water Act.

Also of interest is DAY WITHOUT A BAG TOMORROW DEC. 17TH

Sponsored by Heal the Bay, join us to get free reusable bags, and give up single use plastic bags for the day. Here is a link to the Heal the Bay page for more info.

My friend Siel of the blog greenLAgirl wrote an interesting post about this event on her blog this week. Read her post

I'll be helping Anna Cummins of Bring Your Own, Algalita and Livable Legacy transform old tank tops by sewing the bottoms and using the straps as handles to create reusable bags. Come to downtown tomorrow to get one!
This is Kirsten who I met at the Blogger Beach Cleanup. She is a raw food expert and has been offering classes in Santa Monica and the LA area lately to teach people how to make delicious raw desserts and other healthy, yummy, raw foods. Leave me a comment if you would like to learn more about her classes and get in touch with her and I will connect you.

Recently back from Sierra Leone to raise awareness for amputee victims, she dedicates a lot of time to the service of other people, and the environment. Thank you Kirsten for coming out today!

If you would like to join me, just get in touch by leaving me a comment, sending an email, or following me on twitter. I will include you in my post for that day, and add the weight of trash you collected to my Community Count tally. See the information above under the life guard tower picture.

She also kept collecting after the 20 minutes were up. I gave her this bag to borrow from the Green Bag Lady made for me to use in my Daily Ocean project. I thought it was so cool of her to want to keep going. I understand how hard it is to leave anything behind on the beach.

Blogger Beach Cleanup - Oct 24

The Blogger Beach Cleanup: An event that we hosted (Siel of greenLAgirl, and myself) as part of 350.org Bill McKibben's project to inspire events on Oct. 24th, International Day of Climate Action to raise awareness about Global Warming and the climate crisis.

120 people signed in, Garen counted 140.

trash collected for 20 min.

estimated pounds of trash collected: 39

green LA girl has extensive coverage of prizes awarded and sponsors that provided us with give aways here.

I have tons of pictures to share below, thanks to my friends Emma and Sophie, that I have posted below along with links to some of the environmental organizations that came out as part of our event.

A special thank you from us to the Green Bag Lady who gave us bags to give to people who showed up for the beach cleanup. Please check out her blog and project. She has given out over 6,500 fabric bags to people who pledge to switch from paper, or plastic, and use fabric!

Fabric that she gets donated to her to create her sustainable bags.
Here is part of the Sustainable Works crew picking out cigarette butts from the sand. Check out their site and see if want to attend one of their workshops that help you get further along the green spectrum from where ever you are right now. Start where you are, smart. Thank you for coming!
My neighbors Fred and Mary. Thank you for coming out and being part of our larger community. They have already contacted me about coming out next week to collect. You can too! Follow me on twitter or look at the upper right hand side of my blog where my twitter feed is posted and you can check when I will be out there next.

I usually tweet what time I will be collecting at the beginning of the day. Join me and I'll add the tally of pounds you collect to the Community Count Challenge. See that tally at the top of my blog.
Jessica Ridenour, editor of lime.com, a big green community with feature articles, blogs, and tons of wonderful, informative, environmental information. Thank you for bringing the family out and collecting trash with us on Sat.
Evan Kopelson from Green Media News is a really well informed website with news articles and videos covering a range of topics from CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), climate change, sustainable business and personal responsibility.

He is also in a video that Eco Vegan Gal put together. View it below.

Thank you Evan for coming and shooting video yourself. And thank you Whitney for taking the time to post this video to youtube and being so cool and supportive. I hope we can all collaborate in the future.

Thank you too to the guys from Green Guys Media. Three friends who:

"The Green Guys will be the catalyst that fuels the public’s knowledge and acceptance of green technologies through outlets ranging from syndicated television programming to non-profit environmental organizations."

So many more people turned out than expected. They brought their families, friends and I think we even pulled a few people in off the bike path and beach. A sincere thank you from us to all of you who participated.
We weighed everyone's collection and then with the help of my friend's son Daniel, we made a huge 350. Daniel's father, Dan, has a really cool blog called the Climate Community. Check it out. He finds people from all over the world doing amazing things to help our environment in many creative and powerful ways.

Thanks to my husband Garen and Siobhan from Heal the Bay for weighing the trash. Siobhan went to three or four events that day, I lost count, talking to people and hauling beach cleanup supplies as she went. I really like what Heal the Bay does. If you don't know about them, check them out here. Thanks for helping us with the cleanup Siobhan!
That's Bryan Koch of Net2LA, a social media expert who started his company to help nonprofits get organized utilizing social media to help them expand their support base.

"Net2LA helps Los Angeles–based nonprofits—and those working toward nonprofit status—actively engage their base and find new supporters through community-empowering technology. We meet every month alternating between educational Support Sessions and partnership-building Happy Hours.

Follow us on Twitter @Net2LA"
Thank you Garen. That's my husband Garen, the man with the clip board. He is a Marine Biology professor at Santa Monica Community College.
As Evan help us his video camera and counted to three, we all screamed 350.org

Siel and I have already made loose plans to do another one as I get closer to completing my 365 days of cleaning my local beach.

Hope you had fun, or if you missed the chance to come, you'll join us for another one.

And lastly, Siel of greenLAgirl really pulled together a community of people that supported the Blogger Beach Cleanup and made it all possible. Thanks Siel!

Day 64 - Oct. 2

click on the box to find out more! designed by Net2LA


life guard tower 26, Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

estimated pounds of trash collected today - 1.9

estimated pounds of trash collected to date - 316.9

You've got to see what the Green Bag Lady is doing! She made me these bags especially for collecting trash on the beach, but she has made over 6500 of them and mailed them to people around the world for free if they promise to use them instead of paper or plastic. Check it out! Teresa's generosity is astounding, thank you and keep it up!
I was completely blown away when I received her package stuffed full with these two custom made bags for me, one for my neighbor who has been giving me plastic bags to use (which has been a great way to recycle them for her, thank you Diana), and many for gifts for THE BLOGGER BEACH CLEANUP OCT. 24TH. If you come, you may get one of her bags!
Rorschach or balloon? Or balloon as Rorschach test, you know the ink blot flash cards where you

are supposed to tell what you see instead just the blotch of ink on the page? Anyway.
Motor oil bottle, fabulous.

Have you seen this site? The Climate Community is doing great things. I met Dan today who is behind this project. It is wonderful to meet people who are curious, humble and passionate. Great work Dan, keep it up.
At the rate I am going I collect once every three days. This is a little too slow in my opinion. What has brought my average down is a week like last when I was just too sick to come to the beach, or when we went on our honeymoon. These events are understandable, and why I set the rule for myself that I will collect on 365 non-consecutive days, but I feel the need to try and step it up a bit. What a slacker I am, huh? I know, perspective is a tricky thing. Think a happy medium of stepping up and letting myself have a little slack is where I need to be. This elusive middle ground - balance.
It was so wonderful to be back on the beach tonight.

Day 61 - Sept. 22

Lifeguard Tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

estimated pounds collected today - 2

total pounds collected to date - 311.9
Today was a wonderful, and strange day to be out here. Santa Monica Daily Press came out to photograph me for the weekend edition of their paper. They are an online paper, so if you want to check on Sat. and see the article, click here.

I think I forgot to take as many pictures, or pick up as much trash, but I am very excited they are interested in The Daily Ocean. Thank you SMDP!
I wrote an OP-ED piece for the LA Times, they didn't want to run it, but I still like it. I'll include it in this post starting below:

As We Say Goodbye to Summer How Are We Leaving Our Beaches?

Who can imagine summertime without going to the beach? Even if you don’t live on the coast, just the thought of a beach probably brings to mind pictures of summer. For millions of people the time they spend at the ocean defines the season. Many of us have early memories of being a child there, discovering waves, chasing sea gulls, and building sand castles.

September 20th was the last official day of summer. Over the past weekend thousands of us probably headed out to the beach to enjoy the final moments before fall arrived. Some of us may have participated in “Coastal Cleanup Day” last Saturday sponsored in part by Heal the Bay, and The Ocean Conservation. “Coastal Cleanup Day” is a an initiative to raise awareness about issues of Ocean Conservation, like the huge problem of Marine Debris, by inviting people to participate in a nation-wide beach cleanup.

You may have noticed that we are literally trashing the beaches. Marine Debris is one of the largest problems affecting the health of the ocean. You may have also heard about the North Pacific Trash Gyre, an island of floating trash swirling in the middle of the Northern Pacific that is now twice the size of the continental United States.

How does all this trash end up in the ocean? Storm drains from urban coastal areas lead straight into the water. Without grates over most openings to catch the larger pieces of trash, all the litter that lands on the street gets swept into the sea. And that’s not all. Motor oil, dog waste, pesticides and fertilizers end up in there as well. This is a design that has always concerned me, and strikes me as particularly insane.

But storm drains aren’t the only way these items are getting to into the water. We leave a lot of the same items behind right where we were, on the sand. Recently I saw a California Gull swallow a Bic lighter whole. I was just feet away, and unable to stop it.

As we say goodbye to the end of summer I’d like to ask how are we going to leave our beaches? I am not naturally optimistic. But even though that is often how I feel I think the real question on my mind is that, if you know what is going on, and have informed yourself of even a miniscule amount of the ecological research available, how can you not do something?

I chose to start a one-person beach cleanup as a way to begin. I head to my local beach and for twenty minutes at a time, pick up trash off the sand. It started as a way to protect my own mental health, and has developed into a blog called The Daily Ocean as a tool to raise awareness.

If the same trash appears daily why do I return? Am I really stopping the trash from getting in the water or littering the beach? No, probably not. Let me explain, the trash I take away will only be back the next day. Basically the same stuff will return, and when I say the same stuff, I mean exactly the same stuff. Cigarette butts, plastic water bottles, band-aids, straws, food wrappers, tampons, sanitary napkins, condoms, bottle tops, and the occasional discarded flip flop are the most frequent items I find. And I find them day after day.........

(continued on Day 61 results post)

Teresa of Green Bag Lady, has contacted me and will be sending me bags to use for cleaning the beach, one for my neighbor who gives me single use plastic bags to collect in now, and a bunch for an event I am co-hosting with green LA girl ( http://greenlagirl.com/bbc/ ) more about the event in the next post.

She lives in Tenn. and has started a project/blog that gives reusable, beautiful, sown fabric bags away to people if they promise to use them instead of paper or plastic.
So far she has given away 6484 bags to people around the world. So cool!!

Thanks Teresa, click here for a link to her site.