Memorial Day Beach Clean-up

Sonoma Coast Surfrider leads beach clean-ups throughout the year, usually on large holidays, at North Salmon Creek Beach. I participated in the Memorial Day clean-up this past Monday and had a great time!

It was very windy, but it's always nice to get out to the coast. Who can resist this view? 

There was quite a crowd of families enjoying the beach...

...but it was much more desolate looking the other direction. Even on a holiday weekend you can find your own stretch of private beach along the Sonoma Coast.

I love people watching and these kids chasing the seagulls were especially cute. I remember doing the same thing as a kid and watching them was another reminder to look up from the litter and have a little fun. 

I had to chuckle when I found this hat because my New England friends would consider littering a Redsocks item a form of sacrilege! It's always kind of fun to find unusual items. The other unique piece from the day was a large Sailor Moon sticker. I mostly picked up beer bottle caps, plastic utensils, food wrappers, and plastic bottle caps. Plus one full diaper-ew!

Only 30 minutes into the clean-up and my 5 gallon bucket was already halfway full. I've participated in non-holiday clean-ups at this same beach and I rarely fill an entire bucket, even if sharing it with friends after combing the beach for a couple hours.

 

My bucket is usually so difficult to fill because I focus on picking up small pieces of plastic like these. The Sonoma Coast is a rugged and remote beach so it's not that large pieces of garbage don't exist, but they are usually transported into the ocean more quickly than southern beaches via stronger wind and waves. It is rewarding to fill the bucket with large pieces, but also a little sad to find such an abundance of single use items when large crowds are present. I'm just happy I was there to capture these pieces before the ocean could. Every little piece counts and on quieter days I encourage people to focus on the wrack line (the "line" of debris left parallel to the waves by previous higher tides) where you can find hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic stuck in the seaweed.

I thought I had cleared all the trash around me and decided to sit and enjoy the view for a few minutes. The second I sat down I saw a new piece of litter. Can you spot it?

How about now? It's interesting how just a small change in perspective can uncover things previously hidden that now seem so obvious. It goes back to what I was saying above about focusing on the wrack line. I've sat for 30 minutes in one spot and picked up small items just within arms length.

No trash in this wrack! There is a cute mole crab molt though!

 Full bucket. The end.