Kids Ocean Day in O.C. teaches youngsters about protecting the beach
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It was ideal weather at Huntington State Beach on Tuesday morning, for an ideal cause.
More than 1,000 elementary school students from inland Orange County gathered there, near Lifeguard Tower 13.
They did a large-scale beach cleanup in coordination with Orange County Coastkeeper for Kids Ocean Day, an annual statewide celebration and call to action for the ocean. It’s sponsored by the California Coastal Commission.
The third- through sixth-grade students from Garden Grove, Fullerton, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Orange and Westminster combined to pick up 157 pounds of trash from the beach. They then created an aerial art display inspired by this year’s Kids Ocean Day theme, “Restore Power.”
OC Coastkeeper, based in Costa Mesa, estimates that about 20% of the students had never been to the beach before Tuesday.
“I feel like the biggest takeaway that we want the kids to get is that where they live, even if it’s five, 10, 15 miles inland, is connected to this space,” OC Coastkeeper communications director Matt Sylvester said. “They belong here — this beach is for them — but also the actions that they do, if they pick up trash in their community, it’s going to impact the beach because of that connection to the water.”
James Osborn, a third-grade teacher at Dr. Peter Marshall Elementary School in Anaheim, said his students were enjoying the day. A couple of weeks before Kids Ocean Day, OC Coastkeeper education director Genesee Ouyang visited the campus to host an assembly on marine debris and ocean conservation.
“A lot of the kids had no idea about the whole storm drain system and how when you throw something on the ground, it could end up out here at the beach,” Osborn said. “The learning part of it is really important.”
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