This coming Sunday, April 14th, will see the 6th annual Tacoma Shoreline Survey. (It should be the 7th annual, but 2020.) When it began, there weren’t that many other beach cleanups in the city, at least not on any regular basis. Surfrider offered a monthly cleanup at a variety of spots in the local area (still do), and the Lion’s Club would give it a go every now and then, but that was about it. Now there’s a beach cleanup around these parts almost every weekend, it seems. Which is not a bad thing.

The TSS has changed in some ways over those years. There seems to be less of an emphasis on the science now and more of a focus on helping people connect with the Tacoma shoreline. Where we used to fill out detailed summaries of the items we found, where we found them, a tallying of what was out there, on which section of coastline… now it’s about seeing people discover their own Puget Sound and what makes it special.

(That said, the science continues. This year, the focus is on the total weight collected in three different sections of the shoreline and the app we’re using to track it all is still the same.)

It’s happening on Sunday and it would be great to see you out there. We’ll be HQ’d at Jack Hyde Park on Tacoma’s Ruston Way, along with Surfrider and Tacoma Metro Parks, without whose help none of this would be possible, or at least not nearly as cool. We’ll be out there from 10:30am – 1:30pm, and your options for locations to clean and times to be there are wide open. Clean a Tacoma beach, bring the debris you find to our collection point and sign up to win awesome prizes from Klean Kanteen and Exped. Visit the web site for more info or check out the Metro Parks connection here.