Every month, the South Sound Surfrider chapter heads out to a local beach for a couple hours of cleanup. It’s a fairly easy way to get debris off of our local beaches, removing plastic and other items from the marine environment for good. Over the years, while concentrating on the removal of these things, no real counts have been made before the cleanups began, making it difficult to know whether a particular beach was in better or worse shape than it had been in the past.

Last month’s cleanup at the Purdy Spit was the first one that the Ikkatsu Project was able to survey (results are on the Data page), and although it reflects only one transect, it gives some idea of what you might find in a random 5-meter swath in that location. For the Chambers Bay cleanup coming up this Saturday, a full survey is in the works.

Although it’s hard to be sure of what the survey will show, my prediction at this point is that 100% of what we find is going to be soaking wet.