Watson Island Park Cleanup

On Saturday, January 31, 2026, The International SeaKeepers Society partnered with Run Little Havana, TBD Track Club, Bearly Runners, and Sneaker Impact for a coastal cleanup at Watson Island Park. Taking place one week after the Miami Marathon, SeaKeepers joined forces with local run clubs to combine our missions of caring for our health and giving back to our community. Over 75 volunteers joined us at Watson Island Park, located along the MacArthur Causeway in Biscayne Bay, near Port Miami. After checking in, volunteers gathered to learn about the mission of each organization, take a group photo, and grab their cleanup supplies. Equipped with buckets, bags, pickers, and gloves, our volunteers set out to collect debris along the causeway and fence next to the channel. Our volunteers quickly began returning with full bags and buckets of trash such as aluminum cans, plastic bottles, food wrappers, and plastic fragments. Things quickly escalated as volunteers recovered large items from the grass near the causeway, including a bike frame, a tire, two shopping carts, and part of a car bumper. It became clear that this site is used by many as a dumping ground, and the island’s proximity to the water means that much of this debris may enter the bay through wind and rain. In just an hour and a half, our volunteers collected over 703 pounds of trash, filling more than 15 trash bags. Among the debris was one gently worn pair of shoes, which will be recycled or reused through Sneaker Impact’s donation program. According to data collected by volunteers via Marine Debris Tracker, the most frequently found items were bottle caps, plastic fragments and beverage bottles – all of which will break down into microplastics over time, and contaminate the soil and waterways. We are incredibly proud of our volunteers for their dedication and commitment to cleaning our shorelines, and grateful to all the partner organizations who made this event possible!

Marine Debris Tracker is a data collection app that allows the general public to contribute to an open-date platform and scientific research by recording the different types of litter, specifically plastic pollution, that they find in either inland or marine environments. Marine Debris Tracker was developed by the University of Georgia’s Jambeck Research Group, which SeaKeepers worked with in 2021 when the Jambeck Research Group collaborated with Ocean Conservancy to assess Miami’s plastic waste management, known as a Circularity Assessment Protocol. SeaKeepers again assisted the Jambeck Research Group’s Circularity Informatics Lab in 2022 with another Circularity Assessment Protocol in the Florida Keys. The researchers of the Jambeck Lab use the Marine Debris Tracker app to record their data, and with citizen scientists also using the app, more data can be collected in different areas. Using Marine Debris Tracker at our cleanups involves community members in creating a bigger picture of plastic pollution, and provides the means for new scientific findings to be generated as well as for effective local legislation to be informed. SeaKeepers is excited to be incorporating this app at our cleanups and continue our mission of coastal education, protection, and restoration. In this cleanup, 20% of volunteers participated in using the app to record data.