Pacific Beach Coalition

Beach Cleanups: We engage the general public to participate in weekly cleanups every weekend at different locations on a rotating schedule in the SF Bay area. These volunteer opportunities were attended by nine thousand citizens during 2022. We train volunteer Site Captains to organize and implement these events with a Naturalist to provide 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. During 2022 we accomplished the following: 32,000 pounds of trash, 2,800 pounds of recyclables, 300,000 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, parking lot drive-in movie nights, Eco-fest, MLK day of service. 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 altered 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 2022 we removed 24,000 pounds of invasive plants and planted 1,200 poppies, coast buckwheat, aster, coast gum plant and a variety of other native species to bring back the diversity.