California Coastal Cleanup Day!

 

For one day, every year, we humans can all come together (in spirit anyway) for one very important task; cleaning our coasts!

Saturday, September 17th, 9AM to Noon

For one day, the California Coastal Commission organizes a statewide coastal cleanup in conjunction with the international coast cleanup, organized by the Ocean Conservancy, to become one of the largest worldwide volunteer efforts.

Cleaning our coast is like cleaning up your front yard, you wouldn’t want trash and debris laying around on your beautiful yard, so why allow it on your coast?

Debris in the ocean can negatively effect marine life and water quality, so keeping off our beaches will help keep the ocean a cleaner place for fish to live!

Remember, this is our ocean, our beaches, and our water, so it stands to reason that its our responsibility to keep it clean!

 

Will you do your part?

 

Join PCA and the State Parks at the Gazos State Beach on Saturday, September 17th for our local coastal cleanup and invasive plant removal.  This is a great way to learn about invasive plants on the Southcoast!

The Gazos Beach cleanup will take place on September 17th from 9AM to Noon, and will meet at the Gazos State Beach Parking lot.

Red thumbnail is vaugely where the Gazos Parking lot is.

 

 

 

What to bring to the Coastal Cleanup day:

• Bring a bucket or reusable plastic bag (most beach parking lots of large trash receptacles that you can empty your bucket into before going back for more)
• Bring lightweight gardening gloves from home. Don’t have any? Might be a great time to buy some (Stage Road shops and the Pescadero Country Store both carry them in nearby Pescadero)
• Bring a filled reusable water bottled to the cleanup (Although the website does not specify why, I think we can safely assume this is for our own consumption, as I am pretty sure the ocean has plenty of its own)
• If you plan to bring lunch, make sure its recycle friendly!

Remember that this is a cleanup day, so make sure your prepared to be recycle friendly when you come!

To learn more about marine debris and ocean life, visit: http://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/marinedebris.html

 

I strongly suggest spending some time on the Coastal Commission’s website, in addition to all the info you need for the coastal cleanup day, they have excellent educational info and links for learning more about water quality and marine life. And I really love the ad on the main page for the coastal cleanup day, very cool!

 

 

 

Happy Trails!

First Discovery Hike with SCCS group

The shining eyes, the bright faces, the curious questions, the overall enjoyment of seeing kids discovering nature is wonderful, and sadly rare. PCA kicked off its very first Discovery Hike on August 6th with a group of lovely young ladies from South Coast Children Services, in hopes to help remedy that in our small corner of the world.

The Discovery Hikes are the first of what I hope to be many new projects that PCA will be launching this year, in an effort to bring more nature and understanding to the residences of the coastside.

Tanya at SCCS was very helpful in planning and implementing this hike and I hope we will be working with her more in the future.

Kamilah and myself lead a hike along the Gazos Trail, talking about the ecology of the Redwood forest, the logging in the area and how it affects the forest and general environmental issues that affect the forest. This being the first time I had ever lead a hike or attempted to teach anyone about the Redwood forest and ecology, I was very happy with how well the girls kept up. Having grown up (and still living) in the Redwoods and having attended many of PCA’s past lectures, hike and other educational events, in addition to the fact that my father (who is one of PCA’s founders and very knowledgeable about the Gazos area) has taught me quite a bit over the years; I was happy to pass my knowledge along.

Afterward the hike, we discussed the hike and what to incorporate into future hikes and the girls agreed that shorter hikes with more hands on projects would be more to their liking, so in the coming months we hope to set up some stream ecology projects, useful plants of the forest workshop and data collection projects among more hikes.

We also hope to expand our Discovery Hikes, and will be adding info on this and other local programs to our website very soon! Check in often to see what we are up to!

 

Happy Trails!

Pescadero Conservation Alliance:  www.gazos.org

To learn more about South Coast Children’s Services: http://www.southcoastchildren.org/