Located approximately 30 miles north of Santa Monica, Ventura County is home to many beaches. Ventura County’s coastline is composed of 93% sandy beach, where you can find Ventura Harbor & Channel Islands Harbor. On Saturday September 15th, thousands of people came together to collect trash along 41 miles of Ventura County coastline on Ventura County Coastal Cleanup Day. Our class, along with hundreds of other people joined together at Harbor Cove Beach at Ventura Harbor to remove trash from the beach, including macroplastics and microplastics. Reducing the amount of trash that pollutes our rivers, beaches, and oceans is vital for the well being of wild life and the environment.
Harbor Cove Beach, which is located at the end of the road as you drive around Spinnaker Drive, is best known for its swimming. This smaller-sized beach is protected by two jetties and a breakwater, which reduce rip currents and decrease the wave height. On the southern side of the south jetty, the waves appeared to be more violent with higher surf, and had small amounts of kelp wrack. Harbor Cove beach, which is the area between the jetties and the breakwater, had a deficiency of kelp wrack compared to the southern side of the south jetty. The lack of kelp wrack suggests a lower amount of biodiversity of infauna, which makes that habitat more susceptible to becoming unhealthy. It appeared that the addition of the two jetties and the breakwater had an effect on the amount of kelp wrack the beach received, more than likely due to the blocking of waves. It would be interesting to investigate the impact of the jetties and the breakwater on the natural movement of sediment and sand along the longshore currents.
When I walked on to the beach, I was surprised to see a shortage of trash. I had thought that I would be able to walk on the beach and easily pick up an obvious piece of trash, as normally beaches are polluted with waste. I had then realized that so many people had been picking up trash for so many hours prior, that a lot of it had been picked up already. However, I did notice a good amount of microplastics that had not been picked up yet since they are harder to spot. I was able to dispose many small pieces of Styrofoam and other little pieces of plastic such as broken bottle caps. A group of friends and I decided to move along the beach and check around the lifeguard stand and the southern jetty where no one else was searching for trash. We were surprised nevertheless relieved to not find any trash around there either, so we moved to the parking lot and found a decent amount of trash hidden behind and under trash cans. Once we were unable to see any more visible trash, we walked along the center divider of Spinnaker drive, where we found most of our trash. When we were finished, the three of us together collected around 2 pounds worth of trash. Included in that two pounds were dozens of cigarette butts, plastic wrappers, bottle caps, and even a sprinkler head. Ventura County Star released later that there was a total of 11,741 pounds of trash collected, including another 702.5 pounds of recyclables along our coastline (Ventura County Star).
From this experience, I can understand and advocate the effectiveness of cleaning up beaches and the removal of harmful pollutants from ecosystems. It is very important to keep our world clean by protecting our environment and wild life, while also reducing our carbon footprints for the sake of our future.
Click “The Beach” link below to watch a video of the waves on the southern side
of the south jetty at Harbor Cove Beach
References:
Ventura County Star (2018). 11,741 pounds of trash picked up in Ventura County on Coastal Cleanup Day. Retrieved from https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/2018/09/15/11-741-pounds-trash-picked-up-ventura-county-coastal-cleanup-day/1260722002/
