Creepy Halloween Cleanup with Historic Virginia Key Beach Park

On the morning of October 26th, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted a special Halloween Cleanup with our friends at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park in Miami. Our team met with Maya and Luiz of the Park’s Education and Outreach Team and set up multiple festivities under the park’s large pavilion. 79 volunteers from all over South Florida, including many JSKs as well as students from the TERRA Environmental Research Institute joined us, all excited to give back to their community as well as participate in a costume contest and some pumpkin carving. After waiting out a morning rainstorm, our volunteers heard from our team before grabbing gear and setting out all over the park to remove trash from the beach, picnic grounds, parking lots, and park walking trails. Plenty of volunteers also enjoyed carving some pumpkins in the pavilion, making some very unique and fun designs! After just two and a half hours, our volunteers had successfully removed more than 238 pounds of trash from the park grounds, shattering our record from last year’s Halloween event at the same site. We concluded our day with a costume contest, where three lucky volunteers won some merchandise and goodies from the park as well as SeaKeepers. We give a huge shoutout and thanks to Luiz and Maya as well as Historic Virginia Key Beach Park for having us, and to all of our volunteers for coming out and all their hard work throughout the day!