Down the coast, hundreds participate in annual event to remove trash from local beaches
Along the Malibu coast, hundreds participated in California’s 40th annual Coastal Cleanup Day — a powerful day of community action removing hazardous trash from our beautiful coast.
Heal the Bay led the coastal cleanup across Los Angeles County, facilitating the volunteer cleanup of over 50 coastal, inland, dive, and kayak cleanup sites.
Enlisting the help of local community partners as site captains, Heal the Bay aimed to remove 2 million pounds of trash across the county — with Malibu hosting six cleanup locations at Leo Carillo State Beach, Nicholas Canyon County Beach, Zuma Beach, Corral Canyon/Dan Blocker County Beaches, Malibu Lagoon State Beach and underwater dive cleanup at Malibu Pier.
Residents and natural conservationists equipped themselves with trash pickup tools, sifters, buckets, and reusable bags scattered across the beaches, helping beautify the community.
Each cleanup location was captained by a local organization or community group that supplied cleaning materials, snacks, and education to guide volunteers through the cleanup.
Nicholas Canyon Beach was captained by the California Wildlife Center — a beach used by the organization to release rehabilitated seals and sea lions.
Heather Henderson, marine biolife manager at California Wildlife Center, said Nicholas Canyon Beach is a beach that is near and dear to their hearts and called it a hidden gem in Malibu.
“It’s easy to look at Malibu’s beaches and think about how beautiful they are but there’s a lot of micro-trash out there and that’s what really hurts our ocean animals,” Henderson said. “We’re out here today to spread out wide and leave our beaches even more beautiful than it already is.”
Cambria Wells, education and outreach manager for the California Wildlife Center said it was important for their site to attack the issue of microplastics.
“To us, it’s really important, because to get those things off the beach because they’re the size items that our animals could actually ingest — really small things, pieces of styrofoam, plastics, bits of metal,” Wells said. “Here we get a lot of stuff coming in from the ocean so here we can pick it up, sift it out and keep it from returning to the ocean.”
Down the road at the Corral/Dan Blocker County Beaches, the Antelope Valley Desert divers captained the cleanup. Scott Gerstel, sergeant at arms for the Antelope Valley Desert Divers said it is important to maintain the ecosystem and safety of beaches by volunteering to clean up the beaches that we enjoy.
“Trash messes with the wildlife, disrupts the ecosystems and we need to make sure that things stay the way they’re intended to,” Gerstel said. “It gives us a place to go diving without missing the creatures we want to see or finding unsightly garbage that we have to gather while we’re underwater.”
Zuma Beach cleanup was captained by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, and while some enjoyed games of volleyball and laid out to catch some sun, enthusiastic community members gathered bags and buckets of trash around the highly visited beach.
Robert Ramos, senior education manager at the Heal the Bay Aquarium helped facilitate the cleanup at Zuma and saidthe cleanup was inspiring to see the variety of different people and age groups participating in the cleaning efforts.
“We’re all connected, whether we realize it or not, to the ocean. We not only come here to enjoy our beach time, but we are eating from the ocean, getting oxygen from the ocean — if we care about this place, care about the creatures that live here, and care about what it means to us, then being here, being present today means ensuring a future for all of us,” Ramos said.
The participation across Malibu highlights the love and appreciation for Malibu beaches, which have helped propel Malibu beaches among the best beaches in Heal the Bay’s annual water quality report card year after year.