On Saturday from 10:00 am-12:00 pm, the Roslyn Branch partnered with the Theodore
Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center to help clean up Stehli Beach for International
Coastal Cleanup Day.
International Coastal Cleanup Day was created to encourage people to help get rid of garbage
in the ocean from its source, beaches. Every year, almost 14 million tons of trash are added to
the ocean, creating an unsafe environment for any organisms that live there. Stehli Beach is
known for nesting shorebirds such as the Sanderling and the Semipalmated Sandpiper during
their migration. Throughout the hot summer, many people went to Stehli Beach, resulting in an
increased amount of trash. Unfortunately, shorebirds can mistake the trash for food and eat
them, or feed them to their chicks. Today, we split up into two groups and started on one side of
the beach, where most people visited. After about an hour of collecting garbage from that side,
we moved to the other side of the beach, where most of the shorebirds were. Although most
people don’t hang out there, there was still a lot of trash lying around. For future research, we
also kept track of the types of objects we were collecting and the amount.
At the end, we collected many different types of waste, including bottle caps, cigarette butts,
and even a few syringes. Cleaning up the beach on International Coastal Cleanup Day made us
feel connected to the people all over the world that were also cleaning up the beaches today.
We will be extra mindful of what we leave on the beach, and we hope that our actions help the
shorebirds with their migration.
Members who participated include:
Brooke Zheng (2 hours), Elyse Jin (2 hours), Adrian Jin (2 hours), Angeline Li (2 hours), Leo
Zheng (2 hours), Isabelle Tsui (2 hours), Natalie Tsui (2 hours), Zihan Wang (2 hours), Katelyn
Zhang (2 hours), Leah Chan (2 hours), Kristen Zheng (2 hours), Lincoln Zheng (2 hours),
Lyndon Zheng (2 hours)
Reporter: Isabelle Tsui
