Despite everything else happening on Saturday, more than 50 took time out to help clean up West Seattle’s busiest beach. From Seal Sitters‘ Robin Lindsey:
Seal Sitters teamed up with Alki Community Council and Seattle Parks to sponsor a cleanup of Alki Beach (and Constellation Park) in honor of seal pup Sandy who was found dead, entangled in derelict fishing line earlier this year. Fifty-one passionate people showed up, anxious to do their part to help protect sea life from the dangers of marine debris and trash. Peggy Foreman of NOAA talked briefly about marine debris and specifically about the stranded Arroyos gray whale whose stomach contents consisted solely of human trash.
While the beach did not appear to be as littered as usual on a summer Saturday morning due to a rather rainy Friday, the volunteers (20 Seal Sitters and 31 folks from the community, 6 of those minors) filled about 10 large trash bags. Armed with buckets, bags and grabbers, they picked up plastic bottles and caps, countless cigarette butts, and among other things a kayak paddle, a woman’s black and pink bra and dirty diapers. We even had a family drive all the way from Ellensburg just to pick up trash on the beach. Brooklyn, the “almost” 9 year old daughter, read about seals on our website, saw the post about Sandy and told her mom and dad that she wanted to come help seal pups by cleaning up the beach. We can’t thank everyone enough for helping out today. A minimum of 120 hours were donated this morning (we have not yet tallied the worksheets for an actual figure). All of these volunteers are a true inspiration!
Robin says the photo she shared shows “students from UW’s Environmental Studies program (Kim, Alex, Nick and Ana) who each donated over 3 hours of their time” on Saturday.
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