5 Gyres - Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action

This post is part of a multi-part series (see subsequent and preceding posts) -- I have been photo-documenting and collecting plastic beach debris during the 5 Gyres outreach tour along the US West Coast and into BC, Canada. In total, this will be a pictographic story of the coast through my eyes. Enjoy!

Seabright Beach, Santa Cruz CA

Since I lived in Santa Cruz for seven years, I was eager to take a new look at what the beaches actually looked like through a plastic trash-mongering lens. I was happy to see that, at the time of my visit, the beaches were relatively clean. Trash is kept away from the beaches to some extent because the region is positioned inside Monterey Bay, and the debris from the North Pacific cannot easily find its way to them.

3 Mile Beach, Santa Cruz CA

While still relatively uncontaminated because of their position along the coast, the beaches up the coast have less traffic than the beaches in town, and thus disappointingly had more plastic washed ashore that hadn’t been whisked away by beachgoers.  On 3 Mile Beach, where I used to take my dog to play in the sand dunes until I almost got a ticket from the Park Rangers (3 Mile Beach is part of Wilder Ranch State Park where dogs are not allowed) I found the usual suspects: big chunks of Styrofoam, miscellaneous heavy, industrial-type plastic tubing, bottle caps, lighters, plastic water bottles, plastic bags and remains of freed birthday balloons.