Hello! Hope ya’ll are having a great Spring and getting ready for Summer. If that means spending time at the beach, consider this:
- More than 80% of marine pollution starts on land
- Worldwide, we dump more than 10 billion pounds of waste into our oceans every year
- Lost or tossed stuff poses a huge risk to marine life: whales get caught in fishing nets and drown, and sea turtles die from eating plastic bags they mistake for jellyfish
In addition to my work with SCA – and a big shout-out to everybody who joined SCA’s Pacific Coast Cleanup with the Washington Coastsavers on Earth Day – I’ve been getting involved lately with the Cousteau Society! It is really cool to me, because so much of what they do deals with the ocean, which I am in every day.
I had the opportunity to sit down with some people at the organization, learned a lot, and talked about how I could help them. What we came up with is that every time I visit a beach, I stake a patch of sand and do a trash inventory. I send then an email describing what I have found, and it goes into a database of beach conditions worldwide. It amazes me how some beaches are extremely clean and others are totally filthy. If everyone just cleaned up after themselves (which is not hard to do), it would be such a simple solution to the problem and would make the world that much more beautiful. So I encourage you, when you see a piece of trash, just pick it up and throw it away. It is easy and eventually a bunch of little actions will make a BIG difference.
Recently, I enjoyed a two-month adventure in Australia and New Zealand, where I had some contests. It was so amazing seeing the countrysides and wildlife. One day in New Zealand we had the chance to take a helicopter to a place called Jurassic Falls. We flew along a beautiful coastline before turning into a huge forest and landing right at the base of a 150 foot waterfall.
Jurassic Falls is impossible to get to unless you go by chopper. The land was untouched, and the waterfall had the most pure water you have ever seen! It made me realize how important it is to continue to spread the word about protecting our environment.
That’s what I have been up to! I am now in Brazil for a surfing contest, so hopefully all goes well for me! Thanks so much for reading!!
Lakey P. xoxo