On December 13th, the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance put out an urgent call for help cleaning up the remains of a polystyrene dock support that had washed ashore and disintegrated on a beach just north of Saltwater State Park. 24 hours later, more than 30 people showed up with buckets, bags, trowels, and sieves not knowing what to expect.
We scrambled over rocks at the end of the breakwater to look on the beach beyond. I’ll admit it was a bit overwhelming. OMG, where to start? It looked like someone had dumped a truckload of popcorn over 100 yards of beach. And not just big pieces… it was the little pieces you find with the unpopped kernels at the bottom of the bowl. It was scattered across the beach and trapped in the crevices between the breakwater rocks.
Cleaning it up
Wishing I was half my size, I wedged myself down into the rocks to reach as much of it as I could. Have you ever tried to pick up small, wet pieces of Styrofoam? It’s not easy. It sticks to you. It wasn’t long before I had more foam stuck to my hands and arms than I had in my collection bag. Morale among the troops was getting low, but then we heard it – a cheer coming from behind us. A ridiculously smart volunteer had arrived with a Shop-Vac and a Honda generator. Yay! He was able to stuff the hose down between the rocks and suck a lot of it out.
With him making progress on the rocks, I joined the crowd on the beach. Here the foam pieces were sticky and sandy. Awesome. We collected as much as we could. It just wasn’t possible to get pieces the size of popcorn kernels completely off the beach. By the time we called it a day, our group collected about 20 pounds of foam and 180 pounds of other debris.
Puget Soundkeeper posted the recap on their Facebook page, in case you are interested in reading more.
Tips for you
- If you want to join the cleanup, bring a bag and don’t forget a pair of gloves! It is garbage, after all. 🙂
- If you find hypodermic needles or any other dangerous objects, it is up to you to decide if you want to pick them up. That choice is entirely yours. If you do, please be exceedingly careful – use a trash picker/grabber so you don’t have to touch them and a sharps disposal container to isolate them.
- Share pictures of what you collect on social media, tag @PugetSoundkeeper with the hashtag #PSKVirtualCleanup. They will happily repost your images to show off your good work to the larger community.
Go Deeper!
Go Deeper to explore the ocean and the Salish Sea through a curated list of articles, books, films, and other resources.
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