2,189 passionate volunteers worked from 9 to Noon on Saturday, September 21, collecting more than 6,000 pound of trash and over 1,700 pounds of recycling from 64 beaches, rivers, and inland areas across Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties!
Annual Coastal Cleanup Day is California’s biggest cleanup of the year, which takes place annually on International Coastal Cleanup Day. Save Our Shores has partnered with the California Coastal Commission, serving as the Central Coast Host for this much loved annual effort for over a decade.
Interesting finds included: car parts, half a life-size plastic skeleton, an office chair, fake fingernails, scrabble tiles, a gutter, a flat screen television, a Mama’s and Papa’s “This One’s Dedicated to the One I Love” 45, a Hungry Hungry Hippo game, dentures, and a rusty nail clipper. Upper Car Lake in Monterey had the most debris with 1,121 pounds of trash and 1,175 pounds of debris. At least 37 hypodermic needles were also collected as part of the cleanup.
Patagonia Santa Cruz led the cleanup at Zmudowski Beach in Moss Landing with Patagonia Surf Ambassadors Kyle Theirmann and Jeff Denholm volunteering their time to raise awareness about the need for people of all ages to work together to protect all that we know and love.
In addition to being big wave surfers and serving as Patagonia Surf Ambassadors, Thiermann and Denholm are both making big waves to help protect our ocean and our future. Thiermann has created podcasts and films documenting destructive practices around the world with his Surfing for Change project and held a mock awards ceremony “honoring” corporations that trash our planet in 2018.
Denholm, who owns a fleet of fire trucks that he rents to the U.S. Forest Service to help it fight wildfires, is helping to promote a solution that he thinks may help to lessen the impact of forest fires which will become more frequent and severe as the climate crisis escalates.
Save Our Shores thanks all of our wonderful Site Captains and volunteers! This tremendous effort to keep our waterways clean could not have happened without them!
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For more info: https://saveourshores.org