Seal Beach, Trashy Beach

I have never visited Seal Beach and found so much trash. Ever.

Walking along the pier I noticed trash stuck between the wood boards of the pier and started picking it up. I found a plastic cup that I stuffed everything into along the way. I found a few plastic food wrappers, but mostly water bottle caps and discarded pieces of fishing line. As I was bending over to pick up trash I spotted a beautiful California Sea Lion just off the pier. I had been so focused on the trash on the pier that I hadn't noticed all of the trash in the water.

There were bottles and pieces of Styrofoam floating among the body boarders. As I made my way back to shore I noticed how much trash lined the sand where the high tide had broke. The entire beach was littered with trash that looked like it had been washed ashore. Where had so much trash come from?

The most disturbing part about all of this is the beach was full of people sitting in the trash. What has the world come to when it is acceptable to visit a beach and set up your chairs, towels and kid's play things in a pile of trash? Even the space in front of the life guard tower was littered with trash that included glass bottles.

We found a half buried plastic grocery bag in the sand and started collecting as much trash as we could. It was the first time in a while that I was happy to see a plastic bag. The litter was a mix of Styrofoam, plastic food packaging and small pieces of plastic. I'm not talking microplastics or nurdles. The pieces were made of hard plastic and were mostly flat about the size of a quarter or smaller. It looked like they were pieces of plastic that had once been beach toys. After spending time in the hot sun and water those pieces will eventually break into smaller pieces and then become microplastics.

Considering the wildlife I saw on the beach which included a sea lion, different birds and small crabs in the sand, it scares me to think that they probably have already been feasting on the trash spread across the sand and water. With the amount of trash left on the beach, there is no sign of that stopping.

It was only a week ago that I was at Huntington Beach and although I did pick up a few pieces of trash here and there it was sparse in comparison to the amount of trash at Seal Beach. I have to ask again, where did all of this trash come from? Is the City of Seal Beach taking responsibility by not only picking up the trash, but educating beach goers about ocean pollution?

What is the solution to curbing beach pollution? Beach clean ups are becoming a band-aid to the problem. How does the community of citizens concerned with ocean pollution reach and educate those who litter? Share your ideas in the comments.