A huge shoutout to Rebecca Spencer, Colleen Meister Murdock, and all the volunteers with Seaside Sustainability for their tremendous clean up efforts at Good Harbor Beach.

This is the third week in a row that clean ups have been taking place at GHB, beginning with Cape Ann Climate Coalition Interfaith Group, followed by Applied Materials, and then Seaside Sustainability on Saturday. Each group of volunteers has come away with bags and bags of trash.

We are all so very grateful for these extraordinary good works by all the volunteers!

We would also like to give a ginormous shout out to USMC veteran Chris Cefalo. I have seen Chris often at GHB cleaning up trash but I didn’t realize until after speaking with him this morning that one of his main focusses is small pieces of plastics, roping, and monofilaments that you see entwined in the seaweed and debris at the wrack line. These bits of plastic are ubiquitous. They break down into micro plastics. We breathe them and they are now in our lungs and hearts. The bits of plastic are consumed by sea creatures of every imaginable shape and size. And it was monofilament wrapped around Super Mom’s foot that caused her to lose her toes.

Chris’s bucket this morning was overflowing and he had only traveled half the distance he had planned. Several years ago, Jill Ortiz, one of our Plover ambassadors, had been lobbying to get a (free) micro plastic bin set up at GHB. This would have helped volunteers like Chris dispose of the plastics. Unfortunately, the City showed zero interest and nothing came of her efforts. Perhaps now is the right time to revisit the topic. Just saying!

Many, many thanks again to all the super volunteers working so hard to keep Good Harbor Beach clean and safe for people and for wild creatures <3