Inspired by remarkable daily sightings of humpback whales fluking, spyhopping, tail flapping, breaching, singing and lunge feeding, from Linda Mar to Mussel Rock, our area has attracted a lot of families and groups to explore the coast. With the exceptional warmer weather replacing the usual June gloom, and with the longer clear days keeping people outside and eating takeout meals, the amount of trash associated with food and drinks has skyrocketed. The Google giveback team of volunteers tackled this increase in trash on Wednesday 22 June, picking up about 53 pounds of trash, 23 pounds of recyclables, and 1577 cigarette butts. Jeff and Paxton Christner, in several ad hoc cleanups before they went on vacation, picked up a lot of Japanese tsunami marine debris that the gyre had spun out on our beaches. Later, the Mussel Rock Stars, Julie Walters, Helen Nicely, Christine Burr and Terri Brown, along with two children and their mother picked up 63 pounds of trash, 35 pounds of  recyclables, and 1100 cigarette butts just 3 days later. Unfortunately,  the two cigarette butt containers in the car park were not even full. This suggests that the cigarette butt problem needs to be tackled in a different way at our site. We have a cigarette butt abatement team in the Pacific Beach Coalition who will focus on ways to solve this problem in the coming months.

If you have any ideas or thoughts about this particular problem, please contact me, Helen Nicely, at helen@pacificabeachcoalition.org