25th Annual California Coastal Cleanup Day Saturday, September 19, 2009

California Coastal Cleanup Day is part of a huge international volunteer event focused on the marine environment. In 2008, more than 70,000 volunteers worked together to collect more than 1,600,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from our beaches, lakes, and waterways.

Since the program started in 1985, over 800,000 Californians have removed more than 13 million pounds of debris from our state's shorelines and coast. When combined with the International Coastal Cleanup taking place on the same day, California Coastal Cleanup Day becomes part of one of the largest volunteer events of the year.

This year's local cleanup for the Sonoma Coast is Sept. 19 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and the staging area is at the Salmon Creek Ranger Station. They suggest that you pre-register for all beach sites or call (707) 829-6689 for more information. But if you forget to call, it's still okay to just show up on Saturday morning, ready to help.

Debris from the Garbage Patch washed ashore in Hawaii.

The need for cleanup is more urgent than ever. By now many of you have been hearing about the horrific the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Technically known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, it's an area devoid of ocean currents where floating objects tend to collect.

But "patch" is a misnomer. More than 7 million tons of plastic now clog an area roughly twice the size of Texas. There's six times as much plastic in the gyre as there is plankton, which form the base of the ocean's food chain. And plastic never biodegrades; it only breaks into ever-smaller particles called "nurdles," which often resemble plankton and are mistakenly eaten by bigger sea creatures. Not only do nurdles cause malnutrition, they also tend to concentrate persistent organic pollutants like PCBs and DDT . . . with toxic effects on unsuspecting marine diners. Here's a video from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.



Plastic gets into the ocean when people throw it from ships or leave it in the path of an incoming tide, but 80% of marine debris comes from urban run-off, when rivers carry it there, or when sewage systems and storm drains overflow. Despite the Ocean Dumping Reform Act, the U.S. still releases more than 850 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm runoff every year, according to a 2004 E.P.A. report.

Plastic only photo-degrades, or slowly breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, but still remains a polymer. And plastic has been proven to absorb toxins up to one million times background levels in ambient seawater, making the floating plastic a defacto poison pill. Because of their buoyancy and persistance, most of the debris that either entangles sea creatures or found in their stomachs, is made of plastic.

Groundbreaking research has been conducted aboard the ORV Alguita under the direction of Captain Chales Moore, shown in this longer video.



Isn't this depressing? I'll be there to pitch in next Saturday and I hope you can join me. It's the least we can do.

Resources:
California Coastal Commission
Algalita Marine Research Foundation
Plastic Debris