North Miami Beach Cleanup
North Miami Beach, Florida
February 11, 2023
Overview
On Saturday, February 11th, 2023, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted a small cleanup on North Miami Beach near 81st Street. Our 9 volunteers persevered through the cleanup being postponed a week due to a strong wind advisory earlier in the month, as well as some typical Miami construction thwarting plans the day of the cleanup. We were so grateful to have such an enthusiastic group who in just an hour cleaned up 26 pounds of trash from the beach’s sands, dunes, grasses, and the larger park area preceding the coastline. We are very excited to have been joined by two of our Junior SeaKeepers, Isabel and Elisa. We were also elated to see a beachgoer stop by our tent and join in on the cleaning. Overall, an incredible amount of metal and plastic bottle caps, food wrappers, and cups and plates were cleared from the pristine North Miami Beach. Interestingly, even though the City of Miami has begun to enforce the no-smoking ban on beaches and parks, punishable with fines of up to $100 and even 60 days in jail as of January 1st, 2023, we still found many cigarette butts. We are hoping this is just residual waste from before the ban was put into place and that we will tend to see less of this kind of pollution as the year progresses. Thank you to all our volunteers for showing up and showing out, and we hope to see you at our next cleanup!
Outing Goal
CleanSwell is a trash collection mobile app developed by Ocean Conservancy and utilized by volunteers at each of our cleanups that allows them to record the types and quantities of trash found during their clean. Our mission at SeaKeepers begins with the foundation of research followed by the education of communities that empower them to protect and restore the surrounding coastal and marine environments. Data from the CleanSwell app is included in a global database that scientists everywhere can access and provides a means of identifying pollution trends that are location specific. Using CleanSwell at our cleanups involves community members in the Ocean Conservancy’s pursuit of evidence based solutions for a healthy ocean and the wildlife and people that depend on it, as well as provides the data necessary for effective local legislation to be written accomplishing the SeaKeepers’ goal of protection and eventual restoration. This cleanup saw 78% of volunteers participating in data collection, and 100% of our trash collected being accounted for! Thank you so much to all of our citizen scientists for taking this cleanup further than the trash can.
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