Beverly's Palm Beach Cleanup - Part 1

My friend Beverly has done it again! For those of you who haven't read a Beverly Beach Cleanup post here on The Daily Ocean, let me catch you up quickly. She contacted me through this blog last year wanting to get involved with the Community Collection Count cleanup invitation that I put out to readers.

If you go to, or live by a beach, you can do a Daily Ocean style cleanup. Collect for 20 minutes, take some pictures of the beach and the trash, write a few words, and send it to me to post here on my blog. I will add the pounds of trash you collected to my running tally, and highlight your cleanup.

Beverly has done half a dozen at least at this point. What a cool thing that she has been out there so much that I have lost track of just how many times I have received her well written, beautifully photographed accounts of her beach cleanup adventures. She inspires me, I hope she inspires you too! As always, thank you Beverly. Her experience on the Palm Beach, FL beaches follows below.

Community Collection Count - Beverly

Palm Beach Florida

Day 18 & 19

10.43 pounds

142.93 total pounds

The Daily Ocean – Florida Week 2 – Loggerhead Park, Town of Palm Beach Municipal Beach, and Marriott’s Oceana Palms Beach Cleanup

Palm Beach County

I’d first like to thank Todd of Palm Beach County Surfrider for his generous advice and directions to local beaches – and for the Google map he created with his favorites! The first few days in Palm Beach County I visited a Turtle Hospital, walked along a public beach in one of the wealthiest towns in America, and went to a beach cleanup at my own hotel! It was a great introduction to the variety of beaches in Palm Beach County.

1/25/10
Loggerhead Park (Juno Beach) 6 lb.s 4.5 oz. Collected
Loggerhead Park is behind the Loggerhead Marine Life Center which houses a sea turtle hospital for injured turtles being nursed back to health. This week the hospital is full as many turtles, sensitive to the recent cold, have required care.

There had been some storms earlier that day, but the weather cleared as I walked onto the beach. This is a guarded beach. I found many different kinds of plastic along the beach, bottle caps, pieces of plastic, Styrofoam. But it’s a great walk and the sand felt very soft between my toes.

1/26/10
Town of Palm Beach Municipal Beach (Palm Beach) 3 lbs. 9.8 oz. Collected
This beautiful beach is just north of Worth Avenue, with metered parking or two hour free parking nearby. It’s a guarded beach with the greatest variety of gulls I’ve seen just about anywhere. Walking along the beach looking out at the water, in the middle of great natural beauty it’s a treat to know that just blocks away shops are filled with manmade treasures – jewels, fashion, and cuisine. Which would you choose? In Palm Beach you can have both.

Marriott’s Oceana Palms Beach Cleanup (Singer Island) --- Trash collected but not weighed
I was surprised to see that Marriott’s Oceana Palms – where I’m staying – has a weekly beach cleanup as part of their activities. I had to go, and helped clean the beach with a staff member. They are building the program and it will be great to see more guests join over the next few months. A sister location on the same beach, Ocean Pointe, now gets a larger crowd for their weekly cleanup, and is great for parents teaching their children to ‘think green’. Beach clean ups were suggested by Marriott Corporate and we applaud them – it’s easy to include a few minutes of beach cleanup into a day as a thank you for vacationing on beautiful beaches!

Day 93 - Feb. 1, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

today - 3.1

total - 389.5
KNOW YOUR H2O is a Surfrider initiative that I would like to pass on. This blog will give you updates on important water quality, (ocean and fresh), like the proposed:

"The Green Infrastructure for Clean Water Act (HR 4202) has been introduced by Representatives Edwards (MD), Carnagan (MO) and Driehaus (OH) into the House of Representatives. By funding and promoting both research and on-the-ground green projects, this bill will help protect and restore our water resources while providing Americans with thousands of green jobs, energy savings and better health and well-being."

If you would like to send a message of support for this bill, you will find a link to do that at the end of the KNOW YOUR H2O post. As it says on their blog, "It's your water too, get involved!"
I collected mostly styrofoam cups, bits and bobs today along the low tide line. In the past I have rushed towards a piece of plastic trash ready to be sucked back into the ocean by the next approaching wave. Today, feeling overwhelmed by the styrofoam peppered beach ahead of me, I noticed that I no longer ran to retrieve trash from the water the way I used to. Realizing this bummed me out a little bit, but, BUT - I think it is only human to go through phases of feeling hopeful about the action you take to help the environment, and in my case, specifically the marine environment, and then perhaps fluctuate towards feeling overwhelmed by it all. Here is a quote from my friends Anna Cummins and her husband Dr. Marcus Eriksen's website 5 Gyres -

"The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed." - Jacques Cousteau

It may seem like an impossible task to stop polluting our oceans, marine animals and ourselves with plastic pollution, but really what is our option?

See what Anna and Marcus are up to during their sail from Bermuda to the Azores, trolling for plastic and spreading awareness across the globe - 5 Gyres
My friend and Co-Founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Manuel Maqueda, works on an amazing site called The BlooSee. If you are an ocean lover, this is a must see. Please go explore this site, it is inspiring and a fantastic resource for all of us that love the "BlooSee" to aid us in remembering why we care so much about keeping it from further environmental destruction.

"BlooSee is the place to share your knowledge related to navigation and the sea (anchorages, marinas, dangers, tourist information, paradises and dream spots, etc.) on a global world chart. It is also a social network for every sea-lover out there: share photos, comments, and stories with other users as passionate about the blue world as yourself." - BlooSee website

Morro Bay Marine Biology Field Trip - Jan., 2010

My husband Garen works at Santa Monica College teaching Marine Biology. His winter term class got to go to Morro Bay, (Central Coast California), over the weekend and for the first time, I got to go along!
Our day started at Morro Rock to watch a family of Sea Otters. "But wait, that's a squirrel you say?" Yes. I wanted to include this photograph because the student pictured above came for his second time and brought tortillas just for this little fat guy he nick-named Rocko. I took his preparedness as a good omen for the day.

Obviously feeding wildlife should not be encouraged, but how could we resist the charms of Rocko? Who, as you can see, is doing pretty well for himself.

A 40 mile drive up the coast from Morro Bay led us to San Simeon where the once severly endangered Elephant Seals rest, and mate from now until mid-February. During the late 1800's it was estimated that there were as few as 20 Elephant Seals left along the coast. Once hunted for their dense blubber, they have now recovered to numbers that range in the 200,000 - 300,000 count.

It's good to be the King. A male Northern Elephant Seal can weigh in at as much as 5,000 pounds.

They are not the most graceful animals out of the water although when provoked to defend their "herem" of females, they move quickly and often draw blood.
Focused on one thing, males often run the smallest seal pups into the sand in their pursuit of females. It would be like parking a Toyota Corolla on top of a seal pup. I am glad I didn't witness this.
As Garen was giving a quick lecture to his students who were gathered in the parking lot, he taught them the official term for Bachelor Males who are herem-less, drifting off to the side waiting for the Alpha Male to turn a blind eye.

"Sneaky Fuckers." Yup. You read that correctly.

Garen mentioned that only about 30% of Elephant Seal Pups make it out of their first year. But while on the beach they gain up to ten pounds a day, feeding on their mother's milk that is 55% fat. Cows milk is 4-5% fat to give you a comparison. Essentially, if out of harms way, the pups lay in the sun, drinking mayonaise-like milk, then snoozing until their next feeding time.

Waves along this part of the Central Coast were pretty big over the weekend.

Another view of the coastline where the Elephant Seals come in to the beach.

Could be California, could be New Zealand. I love living here.

So I practiced a Daily Ocean Community Beach Cleanup with his class and I have never seen a cleaner beach than the one at Los Osos's State Park! I found 4 items of plastic. One of them is pictured above.
A fishing pole with the line still in the reel, tangling all kinds of kelp and other sea debris in it.

Fishing line seemed to be the most common plastic pollution found on this beach, but there was only very little of it.

Feeling foolish for sending 20 students out onto a nearly prisitine beach to collect trash for 20 minutes, I quickly realized that in fact this was a cause to celebrate!

I told them about my blog, and collection efforts in Santa Monica to contrast the beach they were on, inviting them to talk to me about beach pollution and the plastics saturating our oceans if they wanted to. But in the end, they had a 2 pound collection from a 20 minute stroll, giving them the chance to enjoy what a beach should look like.

Next we explored some tide pools, getting the chance to enjoy Sea Anemones like this one.

Or the chance to pick up this "Alien" as one student put it. Actually it is some kind of multi-armed starfish whose official name I have forgotten. Sorry Garen.

As Garen waited for his students to crawl over the last of the rocks to the final cove, he brandished a piece of Bull Kelp that he later taught is also called "Sperm Kelp."

A view of the tide pools at Los Osos (The Eyes)

If you eat this green algae off the rock, you get extra credit. Garen had one taker.

My time out at the tide pools ended by watching a Snowy Egret walk amongst the sea foam. Beautiful.

SMC Marine Biology Field Trip to Palos Verdes - 1/27/10

I've mentioned before that my husband Garen teaches Marine Biology at Santa Monica College. After missing out on many Palos Verdes field trips, (his favorite), I got to go along yesterday with about 20 or so of his winter term students.
The view from the top was stunning. The path to the bottom was treacherous. Soil with a high clay content, steep slaking rock ledges, and a sharp decline to the bottom made many of us hold our breath on the way down.

But Garen insisted this hair-raising decline was worth it because this place was pristine, allowing you to find octopi, rare crabs, and other "beasties" as he calls them.
He was right, but unfortunately one of the first unusual things I saw was this foaming can of toxic something or other.....
And when I inspected the high tide line, this is what I encountered. It looked like someone had taken a blue recycling bin and sprinkled it over the beach.
I walked away from the distressing sight after snapping a few pictures, resolving to address the trash later, and joined the group in time to see this.

Garen passing a brittle star off to one of his students for closer inspection. So cool!
My friend and fellow art teacher, Matt Mac Farland designed the crab that holds an old fashioned trash picker in the middle of The Daily Ocean logo. This little green crab reminded me of his beautiful illustration design. Matt has studio space in downtown LA at the Brewery and can be found teaching classes at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, where I also used to teach.
A tiny, baby Brittle Star. Unbelievable that these small creatures survive the thrashing tidal environment to grow to their full size.
Garen cupped his hands around a fish larvae that he wasn't able to identify, but that impressed the hell out of everyone. "Beautiful," he said with a big smile before laying in gently back into the water.

Can you find the Octopus in this picture?

Well here is the same one from the photo above. It darkened its color as soon as it dropped from the safety of the rock into Garen's hand. I had no idea that we were going to be finding Octopuses that were so small! Although small in size, they had a huge presence, making it clear to me that what I have heard about them is true. They grow into intelligent creatures with likes, and aversions to specific people, the ability to use tools, and their all around cool attitude!
The student that found it. Garen kept emphasizing that the Octopus was choosing to stay and play with us. That if it wanted to, it would be gone in a second, back in the water, and out of our reach.

Doesn't this look like some kind of tough Algae?

Here's another shot of it for closer inspection before you decide what it is.....

It is a piece of tough bike rubber, or other plastic miscellaneous item that has been assimilated into the tidal zone as part of the environment. I left it behind, not wanting to strand its inhabitants for the sake of collecting trash. This happened to many of us. We would find a piece of plastic, or synthetic material that was now the home to a small colony of creatures forcing us to choose whether or not to destroy the home of some unsuspecting small "beasties."

Another example of trash turned habitat.

A view looking out to the bay from the tidal pools we were exploring.

After becoming aware of the abundance of litter that was invading the high tide line, many students braved the steep trek back up while holding shoes, buckets, broken plastic plates, aerosol cans of exploding hard foamy stuff, and many other miscellaneous pieces of trash.

They noticed that most of it was PLASTIC, and I emphasized that plastic is designed to last forever, but we use it to package items we only use for minutes.

Garen and I discussed how plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller parts but never truly bio degrades. We told them how these small, toxic pieces enter the food chain at the base level, making its way back to us by consuming the fish we eat.

And that one solution, although seemingly small, is to RETHINK what we buy in our everyday life. Sure a bottle of your favorite soda is easy to grab on the go, but look where the bottles end up..........

Garen will be covering more of these problems, and some of the solutions in his class next week, and I am curious to hear what the students have to say.

I asked them that if this vibrant environment, teeming with unexpected life made an impression on them, to please also take away the impression of just how much trash we found on a seemingly secluded beach.

Beverly's Beach Cleanup in Florida - Day 2

Beverly's Florida Vacation Beach Cleanup

Community Count Collection: Beverly

location: Florida

day: 15 & 16 of 365

pounds collected: 10.3

total pounds collected to date: 130.5

My friend Beverly is vacationing in Florida. Here is her second chapter of beach cleanups. She got information and support from the local Surfrider Chapters, which was really cool of them. To read more about my Community Count Collection invitation where you can do a Daily Ocean style beach cleanup, and I will post it for you on my blog, adding your pounds to the community tally, follow this link

SEE BEVERLY'S OTHER FLORIDA BEACH CLEANUP ADVENTURES HERE

And as always, thank you Beverly, thank you very much for your enthusiasm, dedication, and love for the ocean!

The Daily Ocean – Florida Week 1 – Florida Beach Cleanup - 1/20/10

Martin County – South Hutchinson Island
Jensen Beach and Bathtub Reef Beach

The south end of Hutchinson Island is in Martin County. Heading to the southern tip I cover two beautiful beaches – one very popular and one out of the way but no less beautiful.

Jensen Beach – 4 lbs. 15 oz. collected

Jensen Beach is known locally as sea turtle beach, with signs warning beachgoers to be cautious from March 1 through October 31 when sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. There are warnings about no lights at night, to be careful of nests, and to respect this yearly activity so important to the life of this species. Sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs all along Hutchinson Island, and signs about sea turtles are at every beach, but Jensen Beach seems to be a central spot.


It’s January so sea turtles are not due to arrive for over a month. On this sunny day the parking lot is filled with cars, and beachgoers and fishermen are covering Jensen Beach. You can buy lunch and breakfast there, and sit on a lovely boardwalk area with covered picnic tables. With changing stations and rest rooms nearby you can easily spend the day.

I walk along the beach, and it’s crowded but fairly clean of trash. At first I walk by families enjoying the first warm day in awhile and as I walk farther there are fishermen dotted along the shore, most with more than one pole and buckets of bait, many having very good luck today. A clean beach but in the end I collect 4 lbs. 15 oz. – most pulled from seaweed raked at the back end.

Bathtub Reef Beach – 5 lbs. 6.4 oz. collected

Bathtub Reef Beach is at the very tip of south Hutchinson Island. It’s been closed for a few years due to erosion. Piles of sand are in the parking lot and a bulldozer blocks the entrance. Turning around, I park nearby at an unguarded – and unnamed beach. Families are here, most with dogs, enjoying the day. It’s an ‘official’ beach with restrooms and a walk and stairs to the beach, but unnamed.

There is more trash to gather at this beach – straws, bottle caps, cigarette butts – and it feels a little more neglected than the other beaches I’ve visited here. I head south, and after a short walk I arrive at Bathtub Reef Beach. While the parking lot is blocked, the beach is accessible from the shore – no barriers. A low reef hems in an oval area, creating a small basin – hence the name ‘Bathtub Reef’. A father and two children are snorkeling. Mangrove stumps are just offshore, and this beach looks slightly abandoned but not neglected. Despite the closing people are walking along the shore, collecting shells. However, birds are in control at Bathtub Reef Beach – a seagull parades along the front of the beach and a few sandpipers dart in an out around him. The seagull stands his ground as I walk along the shore, his head cocked to view me, so I give him respect and walk out of the way. As usual, I pick up trash thinking ‘this is for you’.