Pacific Beach Coalition

Beach Cleanups: We engage the general public to participate in weekly cleanups everyweekend at different locations on a rotating schedule in the SF Bay area. These volunteer opportunities were attended by 12,211 citizens during 2023. Trained volunteer Site Captains lead these events and a Naturalist provides detailed education. We provide the public the experience of safely removing litter while learning about it. We document each event for data accumulation. We also host private group team building with an immersive experience for schools, businesses, and social groups to give back to our communities. Additional special events at beaches during the year include Earth Day, Coastal Cleanup Day, and July5th cleanup. In 2023 we removed: 41,876 pounds of trash, 2,937 pounds of recyclables, 234,117 cigarette filters.

School Education & Special Events: Every year, we go to the schools with our professional speakers to educate students. They learn about the importance of the ocean, the dangers of marine litter and how they can help. The school assemblies are then supported by field programs that offer experiential learning during outdoor adventures at the beach. We invite teachers to bring the students to the beach to enhance and reflect on the meaningfulness of our projects with them. Annual community events include a Surf Movie fundraiser, Earth Day and EcoFest, MLK day of service and Coastal Cleanup day. These events engage the community including families to get involved with their children to volunteer to make their neighborhood a cleaner and more beautiful place to live.

Habitat Restoration: Various invasive/non-native plants are covering parts of the coastline including ice plants, sticky oxtongue, wild radish, pampas grass, scotch broom, oxalis, poison hemlock and more. Native habitats are being significantly suppressed as invasive, non-native plant species out-compete native plants. Non-native species are one of the most serious threats to the earth's biodiversity, second only to habitat destruction, they threaten about half of all endangered species. During 2023 we removed 18,679 pounds of invasive plants and planted 726 poppies, coast buckwheat, aster, coast gum plant and a variety of other native species to bring back the diversity.