Chevy Beach Clean-Up

Hey Everyone,

This Sunday, May 2 from 10 am - 12 pm at Ocean Beach's Stairway 17 (across from Beach Chalet) SF Surfrider is partnering with Chevrolet to clean-up Ocean Beach. Come see the new Chevy hybrid truck and lend a helping hand to Mother Nature!

Come check it out! Its supposed to be gorgeous weather!

Urban School Beach Clean-up

On Wednesday morning, June 10th Dan Robinson from SF Surfrider and I, along with the assistance of the National Park Services educator Lynn; presented, educated and guided a beach clean up for a Marine Science class from the Urban School of San Francisco. The Urban School is a progressive private school that emphasizes the passion for learning, inspiring its students to become self-motivated and active participants in their education. One of their teachers, Ms. Emily Goodwin, took her Marine Science students out to Ocean Beach as a final lesson of their semester. Such a wonderful way to cement and finish a topic been taught all semester.

The morning started with Dan speaking about what Surfrider Foundation is as a whole and the different campaigns active in San Francisco’s community – including education and beach cleanups. Thanks to the Algalita Foundation Education Kit, I was able to pass around our sample of the North Pacific Gyre sending home the message of why we do beach cleanups. With every piece of plastic/trash that we pick up off the beach, we decrease the amount of trash that will be entering the marine ecosystem. This over time; will hopefully decrease the size of the Pacific Garbage Patch. Lynn, an excellent guide and educator from NPS showed Ms. Goodwin’s class where to go and what to look for, as well as what not to pick up, i.e. organic material.

There are several photos of the trip that can be found in the slideshow – feel free to check them out!

Thank you Urban School and Ms. Goodwin for bringing your amazing and bright students out for such an interactive, educational and meaningful trip!

World Oceans Day beach clean-up

World Oceans Day took place at Ocean Beach at Judah on Sunday, June 7th. It was run by Eli Saddler (pictured at the dumpster), the creator of Ocean Health.org (http://www.oceanhealth.org/) and co sponsored by SF chapter of Surfrider Foundation, California Academy of Sciences, and Aquarium of the Bay.

It was a huge turnout with around 300 people. It was a beautiful day with excellent weather which certainly helped draw out a lot of people to the beach. There was a sign-up table and a great table of lots of goodies and coffee donated by Java Beach Cafe - thank you!

With the big turn out there was a prize given to the person who found the weirdest item during the clean-up. The winning item was a stuffed animal/dog-princess, certainly the most bizarre item by far found on the beach. There was a total of 1,160 pounds of trash found that day. Wow! That is a lot, and keep in mind that was only in 2 hours. This is a reminder that we must continue to take care of beaches by: recycling, not littering, reusing cups, using less plastic on a daily basis, and last but not least picking up after yourself and others!

This beach-clean up was a successful one, lets make all of them this great! Come out and support SF Surfrider, the beach and our great Pacific Ocean!

Happy World Ocean Day!

Please join OceanHealth.Org as we team up with the San Francisco Chapter of Surfrider for our annual World Ocean Day beach cleanup in San Francisco at Ocean Beach.

We will be meeting at the Judah Street entrance to Ocean Beach along the Great Highway. There will be gloves and bags. Just bring yourself and dress for variable weather.

You can reach the spot by taking MUNI on the N Judah Line. Please carpool or take public transportation in the spirit of the day.

This is our 3rd annual World Ocean Day in the Bay Area. Please check out: http://www.oceandaysf.org

Co-sponsors:
California Academy of Sciences
The Aquarium of the Bay

I'll be there picking up trash with hundreds of others. Together we can all make a difference! Hope to see you all there!

Cheers,

Lotti

Algalita's Education kit

Algalita Marine Research Foundation's own Sara Cummins and Dr. Marcus Eriksen recently stopped by San Francisco on their JUNK Ride 2009. They came to speak on May 27th to an event held at SF's Aquarium of The Bay put on by our own Kathleen Egan, the Sub-committee head for Rise Above Plastics (http://www.sfsurfrider.org/programs/rap.htm), and Leslie Moyer.

They among several others came to speak about plastic pollution, specifically in the North Pacific Ocean. Dr. Eriksen with a navigation buddy ventured out on the JUNK raft last summer to research and collect samples of the North Pacific Gyre, the large mass of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean. Currently, their JUNK Ride consists of two Algalita staff (Eriksen & Cummins) bicycling from Vancouver, Canada to Tijuana, Mexico to share 100’s of samples of the mid-Pacific Plastic soup with educators, organizations and legislators along the west coast of North America. Their talk was so inspiring and informative. They were able update all of us with plastic pollution data and stats.

One of Algalita's missions is to educate about the plastic-invasion, and do so through public outreach and their unique educational literature - the Education Kit! When they presented this during their talk, I thought, we've GOT to get ourselves one of those! It would be such a wonderful and priceless addition to our presentations. It consists of your own sample of the North Pacific Gyre, the DVD “Our Synthetic Sea Story”, Free Membership, a list of online resources for educators, a reusable produce bag from “Bring Your Own”, and a reusable steel bottle from “Ecousable” - Wow!

So I moseyed myself up to the front, post-presentation, to approach Anna. She was great and super helpful. She said we could get one free of charge because we're Surfrider and we've helped set this whole thing up! How cool is that?! So she gave me the contact info and we now have graciously received an Education Kit from Algalita! Thank you!! Surfrider's education presentations will now be even more updated and powerful.

Will update how the next education presentation goes with the new material.

Cheers!
- Lotti

Lick-Wilmerding

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting to a class at SF's Lick-Wilmerding High School. It is a very progressive and forward thinking high school that teaches through kinetic learning. They have a Center for Civic Engagement that has the whole student body get involved in some sort of civic duty. For Mr. Don Rozzi's Chemistry class, they had chosen the ocean/watersheds, beach clean-ups and surfing - which fits perfectly with Surfrider Foundation!

The presentation was held for a small but interactive audience of 6 students and Mr. Rozzi. It was a nice size since we had more time for questions and real one-on-one interaction. For example, Brendan was a very inquisitive student and had some great questions. The presentation consisted of a short introduction to what Surfrider Foundation is and what we do both locally and globally, the Surfrider Foundation's 'From Sea to Summit' educational video and last but not least a short PowerPoint presentation on Plastic - which can be found on the right below the picture slide show.

They were going to follow the presentation with a 2 day venture out surfing south of SF. Not a bad way to spend 2 days in school... kinda wish I would've gone to school there! :) I hope that they had fun, were safe and able to use the information given to use! Would love to continue to present either annually or every semester to L-W HS. Thank you Mr. Rozzi and students!

Cheers and happy learning plus surfing!

- Lotti

Happy Memorial Day!!

This next week Surfrider will be meeting with the Lick-Wilmerding High School located in Balboa Park in San Francisco. In Mr. Don Rizzi's classroom there will be a presentation on Surfrider Foundation in general, the different committee's that Surfrider entails as well as what they can do to help out the environment and be a good influence on their local beaches!

Updates next week on how it all goes!

Cheers!

St. Ignatius High School

Last Tuesday on March 21st I had the pleasure of presenting to St. Ignatius High School located in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco. I spoke to the Nature Nexus class taught by Mr. Paul Totah. The class consists of 15 seniors who are learning how to live a sustainable and practical life. They had recently finished the water unit and where then going into a careers section. It could not have been better timing for Surfrider to come in and show the From Sea to Summit video as well as speak about plastics pollution. The video speaks about the watershed and how we are continuously a large impact on it no matter where we are located, whether it be by a stream, in the mountains, in a city or lying by the beach.

I had a great time speaking to these great students. They were very engaging and already were great environmentalists. Mr. Totah has done a wonderful job teaching his students about plastics pollution, recycling and how to live a sustainable life in a big coastal city. We should all learn from them and continue to teach others how important and easy it is to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics.

Got this great video from a fellow marine environmental activist Heidi Q. Please feel free to copy the link and email it to your friends and family and remind them why it is so important to pack out the trash that we bring with us on outdoor excursions.

A battle is underway in California’s San Francisco Bay area and it’s the latest front in the nationwide effort to ban the plastic bag.

The bag’s got some powerful allies in the plastic industry who have been suing Bay Area residents to stop these bans.

Check out this 2 minute video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSD21zp89zM and learn how you can take action to say no to the plastic bag industry.

Keeping bags out of the Bay is only the beginning of a worldwide movement to limit useless and harmful plastic bags and protect our planet.

The other day I was browsing the web for some plastics pollution information for a project I'm working on for the SF chapter of Surfrider.

Then I came across this article and it really shocked me. (http://killedbyplastic.blogspot.com/2008/01/greenpeace-article.html.) Its called Killed By Plastic and was written on Jan. 3rd, '09 by Green Peace. It pretty much sums up exactly why I am such a recycle fiend. Everyone is human and can't be a super recycler, but it is so important to try to do the little that we can. Just wanted to pass on some info so we can all understand why we should recycle (and compost).

For most of you, I am preaching to the choir, but I find it important to remind ourselves of why we take responsibility of our actions, and our trash. Since it does not only affect us but so many other animals on Earth. Happy recycling and have a great weekend!

Cheers,
Lotti

P.S. There is a graphic photo of a dead bird in the front, so if you're a little queasy with dead things, maybe you should keep a trashcan near by, or make sure you're near a bathroom...