Day 60 - Sept 20

Lifeguard Tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

estimated pounds of trash collected today - 5.8

estimated pounds of trash collected to date - 309.9
Ruby Slippers! There's no place like home. Garen and I spent over an hour in the water today at the beach in front of Tower 26. I had never swam there before, but we checked the Heal the Bay Beach Report card and saw that it was an A even though it is near beaches that have received an F rating.

And besides, I have collected some trash off that beach that I would rather not swim with. I couldn't resist the perfect body surfing waves that roll in there any longer, and it made more sense to me why surfers will risk dirty beaches if there is a nice wave there. Now I also understand why so many people go there.

The water in the bay is warm, especially in September here in Southern California. And the sandy bottom, where perfect surfing and body surfing waves roll in, makes it a really great place to play in the water. After having such a good time there today, I am even more determined to carry on with this project.
There was a festival on the pier today sponsored by the Roots and Shoots Foundation that was started by Jane Goodall. The students of Team Marine at SAMOHI (Santa Monica High School) brought their RETHINK sign to prop up in front of the stage. Their sign, which I have mentioned in this blog in an earlier post, is made from 37, 427 plastic bottle tops, that is 37,427 plastic bottle tops that have not made it in the ocean. Neither did this one.
An old boogie board, soggy, broken and left behind.
On the pier today I met a group of 4th graders and their parents who have formed an organization called PEACE TROOP. They used to be involved in Girl Scouts but have started to do their own thing, and today they worked for Surfrider. I was very excited to meet them. They are invited to participate in The Daily Ocean by coming out for a beach cleanup with me. And Team Marine will look into partnering with their elementary school in West Los Angeles. Today was a great day to be a part of things going on here in Santa Monica, and the greater Los Angeles area.
Hope you enjoyed today, it was the last day of summer. September can be an unbearably hot month here, but this weekend was just right. It is bittersweet to say goodbye to this season and enter into fall, but this is my favorite time of year. It feels full of possibilities, and full of forward moving energy to greet those possibilities as they develop.

Day 44 - August 14

Life Guard Station 26, Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

estimated trash collected today - 4.4

estimated trash collected to date - 247.7

NEW!!!

Community Collection - Siel of green LA girl Blog, came out to interview me and was the first person to collect trash as part of the Community Collection Pounds Of Trash Tally.

Come and join me, for real! Get in touch, email me, follow me on twitter - I "tweet" when I will be there - or collect at your own local beach and send me pictures, how lbs. you collected in 20 minutes, and your thoughts, I'll post it here at The Daily Ocean Blog.

community collection - Day 1 - 1.1. lbs. - 364 Days to go!

The Daily Water Bottle.
Siel helping me collect beach trash. She came out to see what I'm doing, and lend a hand.
OK - It is curious to me that people put band-aids on at the beach. The water renders them useless, but I'm assuming that this one was intended for use here. I think that together we found 4 - 5 used band-aids in the sand today. Yuck.
Forget something? When I smoked, I would sometimes save a half smoked butt for later, especially if I was running low in my pack. So much care was taken not to stub this out in a way that could not be salvaged later. It was carefully wrapped in the cellophane, but forgotten. I wish they'd taken as much care to take it off the beach with them when they left, as they did to save it for later.
Siel and I talked about the interconnectedness of all of our actions, and how this impacts our environment. We have the privilege of living in Santa Monica, CA. Our city is environmentally minded. This beach for example, is dragged daily for trash, the trash cans (there are 8 - 10 on average between Life Guard Stands) are emptied daily, and still I collect 1 pound of trash from this beach every 5 minutes, which will only be back the next day. So what is the answer? It is not enough for people in Santa Monica to take care of their beach alone, there needs to be awareness at the root of the problem. The root is global, we all impact one another.

For now the best I can come up with is spreading awareness and inspiration. If you are here reading this blog, this is my answer, what's yours?
This is a picture of the joint collection that Siel and I did. Having her come out with me made me examine every step of what I do. For example, I only recently committed to having a separate recyclables bag for plastics, and aluminum cans. Today when we finished I didn't feel good about using single use plastic bags to collect the trash in. These too can be recycled in most places now, and I thought that sending one more to the dump along with the trash might not be such a hot idea.

So I talked to Garen about it and he reminded me that I often pick up disgusting, or unsanitary things. If I were to use a canvas reusable bag to collect and then dump the contents into the trash can when finished, my reusable bag would get pretty nasty, pretty quickly. I could make the effort to wash it often I suppose.

If you have read this far, and have an opinion, what do you think? Leave me a comment.

Plastic or Canvas for my collection. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Day 43 - August 13

Life Guard Station 26, Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

estimated pounds collected today - 3.9

estimated pounds collected to date - 243.3
This is the first thing I saw as I stepped from the sidewalk, to sand and the wooden boardwalk to the beach beyond. The Daily Water Bottle....one in every collection, at least. I later gave it to a man going thru all the trash cans, and looking in the sand for recyclables. By our house in a neighborhood of Santa Monica called Sunset Park, people start going thru the trash at 4 a.m.. If they wake me up I get upset. But should I be? Of course no one wants to be awoken before dawn by clanking bottles and rustling trash, but out of financial necessity they are scraping together extra income and recycling in the process.
This is a picture of the tide line on the beach. Part of my "strategy" when collecting is to follow along where the water dumps seaweed, straws, plastics, balloons and other trash into a tangled pile. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is natural from trash, straw from feather. Unfortunately it doesn't take long to spot the garbage, but often twice as long to unravel it from the rest. Disclosure - some seaweed has gone straight into my bag, adding natural material into the tally of trash pounds, but only when everything is so intertwined it looks like a trap for some unsuspecting marine animal to get strangled in once the water takes it back to sea.
The Santa Monica Pier. Heal the Bay, a local marine conservation organization in Santa Monica publishes a beach report card. Can you guess what the beach around the pier gets? An F, almost every time. Heal the Bay is listed in my links section, or click here.
I get a magazine called Orion - Nature/Culture/Place. In the July/August 2009 issue I read something I want to share here:

On page 1 - From the Editors

THOSE OF US WHO PAY ATTENTION TO THE LARGER STATE OF HUMAN AND NATURAL AFFAIRS ARE BOMBARDED DAILY WITH TRULY HORRIFIC NEWS. IT COMES RELENTLESSLY, THROUGH THE MEDIA, FROM SCIENTISTS AND ACTIVISTS, IN CONVERSATION WITH FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS.

AS AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST PAUL HAWKEN DECLARED TO GRADUATES AT THE BEGINNING OF A COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS THIS SPRING -

"YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HUMAN

BEING ON EARTH AT A TIME WHEN EVERY LIVING SYSTEM IS DECLINING, AND

THE RATE OF DECLINE IS ACCELERATING."

THERE IS A BLEAKNESS ALL AROUND US. THERE IS ALSO EXTRAORDINARY OPPORTUNITY TO REMAKE THE WORLD.

"IF YOU LOOK AT THE SCIENCE ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING ON EARTH AND AREN'T PESSIMISTIC, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND DATA," PAUL HAWKEN SAID IN THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. "BUT IF YOU MEET THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING TO RESTORE THIS EARTH AND THE LIVES OF THE POOR, AND YOU AREN'T OPTIMISTIC, YOU HAVEN'T GOT A PULSE."