Canes for U Cleanup

On April 17th, 2026, The International SeaKeepers Society partnered with University of Miami’s Herbert Business School, Canes for U, and Geared for Green to host a cleanup at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Our partnership with UM’s Leadership Course actively involved their students in planning, organizing, and promoting this event with the support of SeaKeepers. Our team welcomed 53 volunteers from all over South Florida including local university students from UM and St. Thomas University. After some quick introductions and safety briefings our volunteers set out around the park in search of trash specifically sorting out PETE plastics and aluminum cans. In partnership with Geared for Green these items will be shipped and sorted in the appropriate recycling facility to give new life to these materials. Even after a successful Baynanza cleanup the weekend before, our volunteers were able to collect 65 pounds of trash in under 3 hours with odd items including a pair of Oxford dress shoes, a string of Christmas lights, and a giraffe rubber duck. Our team was delighted to see such a wonderful turn out of students and hope today encouraged them to continue to participate in their community. We want to give a huge thank you to University of Miami’s Herbert Business School, Canes for U, and Geared for Green for their time and dedication and hope to collaborate again in the near future!

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.