Courtesy Avalon Ocean Club
On June 12, the students in NAC Avalon Ocean Club celebrated their last day of the Spring season and their first day of Summer with a Kayak Cleanup in partnership with WetSpot Rentals and Bleu World. Over the past 6 weeks, these students have been gaining confidence in the ocean, growing their skills and strength as paddlers, and learning about the kelp forest ecosystems that hug our coastline. This cleanup event was a perfect culmination of their efforts – It was a way for them to use everything they learned this spring to protect the ocean they have grown to love.
We had 24 students ages 9-14 attend the event supported by the Morones Family and Robert & Cassie on their power boats. This season, the club invited advanced athletes called Ocean Club Cadets into the program to train their water safety and leadership skills. Lano Lopez and Jackson Butte were the two Cadets who joined for the cleanup on a third power boat. We focused our efforts on Tin Can Beach, the stretch of coastline that sits just below the road to the dump. Unfortunately, this beach collects trash all year long from both the land and sea. There are couches and golf cart parts, many cans and golf balls, and debris from boats that have washed up on shore.
At the start of the cleanup, students piled into kayaks in the harbor and paddled down the coast to the beach, followed closely by our support boats. Once we arrived, the younger students walked the beach bagging the smaller items and carrying the larger items to a pile by the shoreline. Lano and Jackson then piled this trash onto kayaks and swam it out to the power boats for safe transfer back to the harbor. This collective local effort spearheaded by the students of Avalon had a huge impact, collecting and disposing of 195.8 pounds of debris from along our coast. With the rising tides and strong surge that we’ve been experiencing over the past few weeks, this cleanup was especially important to ensure that there is less debris entering the ocean as strong waves wash up on shore, reaching to pull our trash back out to sea.