My mother is a beautiful photographer. She helped tag Horseshoe Crabs and participated in a Surfrider beach cleanup in Conn.. Here are some of the shots she took of her experiences.
Enjoy! And thanks Mom!
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Day 307 - July 17, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 minutes
2.6 pounds
1,154.2 pounds total
1 cigarette butt
There's a Surf Contest at Tower 26 this weekend and it is going to be a really fun, local event. Our organizer Kevin has put his hard work and heart into it for the second year in a row. Thanks Kevin!
I got two reusable water coolers today so that we won't be handing out bottled water, even though I am sure we could have gotten some donated. The picture above, and the hundreds of others I have from other cleanup nights, is why Kevin and I decided to let The Daily Ocean sponsor the reusable water portion of this weekend's craft service. Come on down, and grab your reusable water bottle along with your board shorts and towel when you do!
We also won't be serving the reusable water out of any of these.
Friday morning is a beach cleanup. Here's the events Facebook page for all the details!
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Day 306 - July 13, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
3.4 pounds collected
1,151.6 pounds total
1 cigarette butt
Sometimes there's so much trash out here, I just want to say FORK IT! I couldn't resist.
Reminds me of the great documentary BAG IT: Is your life too plastic? It starts with one man questioning where all these "disposable" plastic bags go? And goes deep down the plastic rabbit hole from there. Told with humor, researched and well thought out, I highly recommend you at least watch the trailer.
Every once in awhile, my photograph says it all.
Lyrics to the Jimi Hendrix classic come to mind, "Castles made of sand fall into the sea eventually." Unless they're made of styrofoam...I've read estimates that this cup will still be around in some form in a million years. Did your mouth just drop?
The monsoon clouds covering our neighborhood in a humid blanket sure make an impressive sunset.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Day 305 - July 10, 2012
lifeguard 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
3.5 pounds
1,148.5 pounds total
cigarette butts 5
The first LA area BLUE DRINKS started last night. We'll meet bi-monthly for the ocean. That's right, people with an interest in helping the BIG BLUE come on down! You're welcome if you work for an organized NGO, are an environmentally-minded business owner, a creative filmmaker, photographer, blogger, artist...you get the point. You want clean oceans, we want you to come down and meet us.
This blue marble is in honor of Wallace J Nichols, an ocean hero, marine biologist and environmental advocate who started the Blue Marbles project. Can we help him get a blue marble through every pair of hands on the planet? I think we can. Why not? From space our planet looks much like this blue marble. It's been said that perhaps we should have named Earth Water since our gorgeous planet is about 80% covered in it...
Find out more about "J" Nichols, become a Blue Angel of his to help his collaborative efforts and innovative work for the employer he always wanted to work for, the ocean.
There's plenty of plastic bags that need to be taken off our sand before they can do more damage in the ocean. Want to help? Come do a Daily Ocean cleanup with me. Come meet me at the next Blue Drinks. Here's the Blue Drinks Facebook page.
Thanks to Anna Cummins of 5Gyres and John Bates of The Blu for putting the event together! Whoot!
What's your plastic footprint?
A sunset sky over the Santa Monica beach parking lot....this photo inspired by the Blue Marble project while picturing what Earth looks like from space.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Day 304 - July 8, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica
trash collected for 20 minutes
2.9 pounds
1,144.7 pounds total
0 cigarette butts
Watermelon is synonymous with summer. It's strange to think that from this spilled snack, one of the two items will never fully biodegrade. The watermelon might tempt local gulls, but this cup, if blown into the water will add to all the plastic which is:
"...the dominant material littering the ocean, and its proportion consistently varies between 60% and 80% of the total garbage in the ocean."
If set adrift on the ocean, this cup will break into smaller and smaller pieces because of wind, rain, and sun but will never fully biodegrade. It is easier to stop this cup from going into the water than to clean up the micro-plastic particles it will become.
Because, "Going to the ocean to remove floating plastic particles is like standing on the top of a skyscraper with a vacuum cleaner to remove air pollution.
It's a plastic soup over two-thirds of the ocean." - RISE ABOVE PLASTICS, SURFRIDER
Better yet, let's go back one step further and reduce our use of single-use plastic consumption. There's no better place to start than with plastic bottled water. Here's THE STORY OF BOTTLED WATER.
I urge you to watch. It explains so much I didn't know about bottled water. For example:
Most bottles from the USA are shipped to Asia and melted in open-air facilities adding pollutants to the air, water supply, and bodies of the local workers.
Most bottled water is taken from a municipal water source and sold back to you. In other words, it is the same water coming out of your tap, but you are paying for it again.
On a night like this, I think about why we come to the ocean, what people get from a day on the sand. I imagine that their sense of wonder gets renewed. Meeting the ocean where it joins the land lets you interact with an elemental place. The world underneath is veiled from your view. It draws back to reveal tiny critters, shells and treasures for a few moments. Another wave comes in, restoring its mystery until it recedes in a rhythm all its own. The beating heart of our planet.
The ocean takes on the brilliant gold of the setting sun. It reflects the sky, creating shades of blue too varied to name.
The ocean allows you to meet nature head on. While two brothers watched for the approaching surf, I remembered jumping the shore break when I was a kid. This place we all enjoy is timeless.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Day 303 - July 6, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
5.6 pounds
1,141.8 pounds total
5 cigarette butts
The first item that greeted me from the sand was a Joe Camel stub - a.k.a. cigarette butt. Do they still have Camel Cash? As an underage smoker in the early 90's, I was their target audience. Collect enough "cash" glued to the back of a Camel's pack and you too could get a hat, duffel bag, etc.
And the next trash item I found was only feet from it's destination. In defense of the person who left it there, the trash can was brimming over with the remains of the day. That's a joke. There's a phrase that applies when you go camping, "pack it in, pack it out."
A woman left a comment today saying that for years she's done a beach cleanup where she lives. She estimates that she's collected over 15,000 plastic bags alone. She goes on to admit there's no end to it, the beach cleaning that is. And that a solution eludes her.
I've felt the same way on many occasions. But after reading her comment, I realized I believe that there is a solution. I have to. It may not come in my lifetime, or in our children's, but I believe that we'll see what we're doing to our planet and change. We already are.
I believe that what I do today effects that eventual tomorrow. I believe that every time I refuse a single use plastic bag, bypass the bottled water, and reduce my own disposable plastic packaging habit, it makes a different. I believe that every person who sees this blog or asks me about my beach cleanup is changed. Maybe the change isn't immediate, maybe it sinks in somewhere into the back of their mind, maybe the change I believe in will come person-by-person. I believe a solution is to change myself. As a wise man who I admire greatly said,
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
What if we all believed that and then acted like we did?
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Day 302 - July 4, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
4 pounds
1,136.2 pounds total
6 cigarette butts
I was worried heading out on July 4th. Many people in Los Angeles from all over the region come to the coast to see Marina Del Ray's fireworks. What would I find? And how much? Well, I am happy to report that I collected my average - 4 pounds. 4 pounds is still 1 pound every 5 min. of very lightweight mostly plastic items, but it is not what these kids found the day after the 4th last year:
"LAUREN DOCKENDORF, A FOUR-YEAR-OLD VOLUNTEER FOR SAVE OUR SHORES, A BEACH CLEAN-UP ORGANIZATION, SAID HER GROUP COLLECTED ABOUT 12,000 POUNDS OF TRASH IN JUST TWO HOURS FROM BEACHES IN MONTEREY AND SANTA CRUZ ON THE MORNING AFTER LAST YEAR'S INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATIONS."
I know there's a picture of a plastic water bottle above, but this quote from the Monterey Herald about their city's bag ban was too succinct not to re-print here:
"DENISE FRISCHMUTH, PRESIDENT OF CITIZENS FOR SUSTAINABLE MONTEREY COUNTY, NOTED THAT PLASTIC SHOPPING BAGS ARE A PETROLEUM PRODUCT. "ABOUT 100 BILLION PLASTIC CHECKOUT BAGS ARE USED EACH YEAR IN THE UNITED STATES, AND THOSE BAGS ARE PRODUCED WITH NONRENEWABLE OIL AND GAS, CREATING EMISSIONS THAT HARM OUR ATMOSPHERE AND CONTRIBUTING GREATLY TO OUT DEPENDENCE ON OIL," SHE SAID. "IT'S ESTIMATED THAT THE PRODUCTION OF THOSE BAGS REQUIRES ABOUT 12 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL ANNUALLY. WE'RE USING A NONRENEWABLE RESOURCE FOR A PRODUCT THAT IS THROWN AWAY, THEN CARTED TO THE DUMP."
Happy 4th of July!
While the low cloud ceiling may not have made for great fireworks viewing, it sure contributed to a stunning sunset.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Day 301 - June 30, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
2 pounds
1,132.2 pounds total
COMMUNITY COUNT DAY 231
Rita, Anne, Mikayla, Swan
8 pounds
973.8 pounds total
THE DAILY OCEAN COMBINED TOTAL - 2,106 POUNDS
Want to get involved?
15 cigarette butts
My inlaws put leftovers from our dinners together into styrofoam to-go containers like this one from Costco. that they buy in bulk. I've always felt torn about this. They seem to have moved to glass containers in recent months, probably from conversations we've had about plastic containers and what they leach into food. I showed them this photograph Sunday when I was at their house. "See what this is?" I said. They didn't answer really, but the point of the images I share is that hopefully a "picture says a thousand words." Images sink into our psyche in ways that are just as powerful as words.
Perhaps that's why I utilize both to talk to you.
OK, so a BIG thank you to my friends Rita, Anne, Mikayla and Swan who spent part of their sunny Sat. night collecting modern detritus from the sand. Mikayla commented that, "It was surprisingly fun to clean the beach." Here-here sister!!
This mesh bag that may have once held some of the sand toys strewn across the place alarmed Rita. She knows that if this swath of plastic mesh gets blown into the water, it's going to take out some marine life with it. Marine entanglement due to discarded plastic trash makes me cringe too, not to mention what it does to the animals...
Anne on the sand giving it her all.,,
A German family came up to her and put some trash their kid found into her bag.
"What you are doing is really important," said the father. You can't see it, but I'm smiling.
One thought I come back to again and again is that we just don't see it. I mean the collective "we." We walk right on by the trash on our street, in our neighborhoods, or cities, and so why wouldn't we do the same here? Besides the fact the beach is a sacred, beautiful, elemental place that invigorates us all.
But seriously, I think we've grown complacent to the trash that surrounds us. The natural world has not.
Rita and a recruit...
As I take this shot I hear, "Fishes and animals die when they eat plastic so we want to find all the plastic and pick it up so they don't get sick?" says Rita.
"Plastic? Fishes, all fishes get sick?" says the little boy.
"Yes, the birds and animals get sick if they eat our trash, see?" Rita shows him what's in the bag.
He and his friend join the hunt for plastic along the tide line for a minute or two. Every few seconds I hear, "Here's some, here's some!"
Kids are the greatest.
A visual metaphor?
Saturdays, and weekends are hard in the summer. Lots of people enjoying the outdoors, the sand in their toes and bathing suits, the sun kissing their cheeks and shoulders....but with people comes trash, making my weekend collections hard to stomach.
I'm going out in a couple of hours to see the after effects of July 4th....
Friday, June 29, 2012
Day 300 - June 28, 2012
lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
5.5 pounds
1,133.7 pounds total
8 cigarette butts
Last night was my 300th beach cleanup. I have to say, it felt like a huge milestone. There have been times over the last three years that I wanted to call it quits. Wondering if it mattered if I finished, we all know what's out there, how many freakin' times can I write about, or pick up a plastic bag?! You get the idea. But with 65 collections left to go, I am so SO SO glad I stuck it out. It is important to meet my goal, to continue to share these images with you, to finish what I set out to do.
I've said it before, but beach cleanups alone are not a viable answer to getting this junk (mostly plastic) out of our ocean. However, it was the first way I felt compelled to act. That initial action to cleanup the stretch of sand at the end of our street catapulted me into learning about ocean health, plastic pollution, and so much more.
I've changed my habits because of these beach cleanups. I'm pretty sure I still drank water from plastic bottles when I began. I can't remember the last time I did that, or baught one. Why? Personally, I know too much about the tainted water inside. I learned about that because I got sick of picking them off the sand and wanted to know more. There are only so many times you can retrieve stranded plastic water bottles before that's the last thing you'd reach for in a convienence store. Infact, I try to stay clear of all plastic bottled beverages. I changed because of my direct experience with them on beach cleanups.
That's one way I do believe beach cleanups are effective. Most of you will never do 300 of them, but you will do a few. If you're reading this blog, you're probably already into ocean conservation and perhaps love the beach. And in those few beach cleanups that you'll do, you may experience a shift in your own habits as a result of finding discarded plastic detritus from our modern life spoiling a place that you love, harming animals you'd rather protect, and endangering our natural world for future generations.
COMMUNITY COUNT DAY 230
Marissa
trash collected for 20 min.
2.5 pounds collected
965.8 pounds total
We gave this 2012 bottle of bubbles to a five-year-old passing us on the boardwalk. He promised not to leave it on the sand when he was finished playing with the unopened container of soapy fun.
A big thank you to Marrisa who called to me from the parking lot as I passed, "Are you doing a beach cleanup? Can I come?" She'd driven down to 26 to surf, but it was blown out, that is to say - unsurfable. Instead, we took to the sand together. Kismet. Instant friends. We know people in common, and share a love of the ocean. Thanks for coming out Marrisa, you brightened my day too.
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