Our Daily Ocean: Day 188

When it comes to summer traditions, meeting friends and taking a picnic dinner to the beach is ours.  It's a great way to end the day.  Kids playing.  Laughter.  Catching up.  Waves. Birds.  Simple.  Relaxed. Carefree.

Just going to the beach to hang out and then randomly doing a beach clean up while we walk and chat is what 20 minute beach cleanups are all about.  In fact, this beach cleanup was spawned when my and Tracy's kids wanted us to walk down to the Lifeguard Tower.  I grabbed my bag and by the time we walked down and back... we had done a 20 minute beach cleanup.  Easy.

I have good news to share!  Two sea-turtle nests have been laid at Wrightsville Beach.  And my good friends Ginger and John found the first nest of the season!  Read more here.   I also wanted to share that as they were searching for the eggs in the nest, they kept uncovering cigarette butts and other various plastics.  The mother sea turtle created a womb in the sand... and it was littered with our mess.  Let us all encourage and challenge each other to do more.  Refuse single-use plastics.  Pick up litter when we see it.  Write companies.  What ever it is that you can do, now is the perfect time to start.

20 minutes on May 31, 2013 at Access 40

Litter by weight: 6.5 oz
Cigarette butts: 17

Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 188 days:

55,099