The Day of the Beachcomber : Volunteers turn out to clean a coastline fouled by carelessness

The beachcomber, with flotsam and jetsam to pursue and time to kill, holds one of the planet’s last unhurried and romantic jobs. Today, however, as our waterfronts and bays are threatened by carelessness--as waste runs off into storm drains and as the plastic connectors from six-packs and other junk threaten marine life--there is a new urgency to this old, leisurely occupation.

Last Saturday, in a remarkable statewide cleanup organized by the California Coastal Commission, about 22,000 volunteers gave their day over to purposeful scavenging--the removal of hundreds of tons of trash along the 1,100-mile California coastline.

The message of a shoreline at risk seems to be sinking in at last. In Los Angeles County, for example, an effort coordinated by the Harbors, Beaches and Parks Department, Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Restoration Project turned out 4,000 volunteers (a local record) for an annual event, double the number of last year’s gathering.

In San Diego County, 8,000 participated--and at Borderfield State Park volunteers exchanged supplies with workers on the Mexican side of the border, lending an international flavor to the effort to save the coastline.

Volunteers in Upper Newport Bay in Orange County gathered 12 tons of material, which included such non-biodegradable items as refrigerators, auto parts and bicycles, thoughtlessly dispatched to a watery grave.

The good news is that when it was over, much of the state’s beach was clean at least for one warm, late summer day. Local crews did a commendable job organizing the material either for recycling or for waste haulers to take away.

The bad news is that tomorrow is always another day for foolish polluters to ruin it for everyone else. Too many still don’t get the message that battling ocean pollution is everyone’s business.

And even though waterfront communities spend millions of dollars a year to keep the beach clean, there is still the problem, as Santa Monica anti-pollution activist Susan McCabe put it, of “mistaking our beaches for our landfills.”

On one day of diligence, though, beachcombers with a social conscience, with an assist from corporate sponsors, cleaned up after the rest of us.

With state health officials now urging people to limit consumption of certain fish because of high levels of toxic chemicals, and with some of our ocean water unswimmable on occasion, the time is overdue for Californians to face it: It’s everyday carelessness, not just catastrophes like oil spills, that is ruining our beaches.