As a Santa Monica BayKeeper volunteer once a month, I walk my beach. My beach is from 2000 block of PCH (Big Rock) to the 19300 block of PCH (Las Tunas Canyon Rd).
While monitoring the storm drains, kelp beds and ocean life, I pick up trash. Since I live near the beach and enjoy swimming, surfing, scuba diving and observing wildlife, this is an ideal volunteer activity for me.
Last weekend, most of the beach and water were clean except for a few problem areas where I found beer bottles, plastic water bottles, Styrofoam, food wrappers and cigarette butts. (A plea to smokers: When smoking on the beach please bring a portable ashtray for discarding butts. It’s environmental friendly and very fashionable.)
The real problem for keeping our ocean water clean is the trash in front of the homes on PCH. All that litter ends up on the beach and evidently in the water, polluting the ocean. Most of the litter comes from cars driving by on PCH. Someone has to pick it up before it contaminates the ocean. I do it once a month. If everyone who lives in the area and/or enjoys the beach here would help by weekly cleaning their immediate area, we would have a cleaner, healthier ocean.
Marie Turner