California had been hit with a good amount of rain recently. Rain is great for the usually dry and hot California weather, but with rain comes heavily polluted waterways that drain directly to our ocean. Creeks, streams, and storm drains that trickle into the ocean were dumping full force during the rain, bringing large amounts of trash (urban runoff).
During our beach clean up we were able to identify items of marine debris (trash) that had obviously come from urban runoff. We were also able to identify tiny broken and worn pieces of plastic that had been washed up from the ocean. As you know, these tiny pieces of plastic are ingested by marine life and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths for birds, mammals, and fish.
Above, Hillary removes items of trash from the storm drain located near the sand. Storm drains have no filtration system in place so anything that enters will end up in our ocean.
Volunteers removed over 560 pieces of plastic from the beach that day!
Kim holds a "nurdle" in her hand. Nurdles are pre-production plastic pellets (what is made to make plastic bottles, containers, etc) and are incredibly harmful to the environment. To learn more about nurdles go here!
As always, thank you to everyone who volunteered! We hope to see you at our next monthly beach clean up! For more information about our November events check out our website's event page!
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