Oceans 4Ever

You’re never too young to start caring about sharks.

We’d like to introduce you to Alexa’s cousin,  Avery Jean. She’s four, and is learning about the ocean in her preschool class. She made a poster for Sharktakular to express her feelings.

“I love all ocean animals, and sharks bring balance to aquatic life,” Avery say. ”They’re very important and I don’t want them to die.”

Her poster reads “I love sharks. Don’t FINish them.”

We sense a deputy O4E editor is now being groomed!

Just goes to show you, you’re never too young to start caring about – and helping – sharks. We’ll have more on the latter in part two with a guest post by Robin Culler, teacher and captain of Oceana’s 2010 Junior Ocean Hero winners, The Shark Finatics. 

Have a SHARKTAKULAR evening!

Tweet This Post

This past Sunday, June 27th, we embarked on a trash finding and collecting mission around our lake, as part of a project we did with fellow ocean blogger Sara Bayles of The Daily Ocean.

We really had no idea how much trash was hiding in plain sight.

More on that in a minute.

First, we have to thank Sara, whose year-or-so long experiment to collect trash on 365 non-consecutive days for 20 minutes each time, weigh it, analyze it and blog it, has opened our eyes to the reality of the trash – and plastic – problem we have going on along our shores (and that means everywhere else, too).

Sara does her clean-up along the coastline near the Santa Monica Pier and lifeguard tower 26 in Santa Monica, California. This ability she has to open the public’s eyes to the alarming amount of not only trash but PLASTIC in this trash made her a finalist in Oceana’s Ocean Heroes Award 2010.  Sara has collected 510 pounds of trash in 129 days so far.

No, that was not a typo.

We made a short video of our clean-up:

For the full scoop, head on over to Sara’s post on our joint effort for her clean-up’s totals, our detailed list of what we found and much more. It was SO alarming and SO interesting that we are going to do a lot more clean-ups, and a monthly clean-up with Sara, lake-to-ocean-style. Thank you, Sara, and we can’t wait for more!

Want to clean up with us? Want to do a long-distance co-clean-up with O4E and The Daily Ocean? Get in touch and let’s talk some trash!

Tweet This Post

Happy Friday, Ocean Lovers!

We’ve been planning. We’ve been baking. We’ve been…sampling.  A lot.

And so, without further adeux, we’d like to announce a culinary – and ocean conservation – event like no other, a partnership with our friend Casey Sokolovic of L.A.S.T. (Love a Sea Turtle).

Image: Heather Garland

Wait for it…

The Great Bake for Oceans’ Sake is here. Super-surprised by the name?  We thought you would be.

We’re putting on our aprons, weilding our rolling pins, and rolling out a coast-to-coast, simultaneous bake sale on July 9th, National Sugar Cookie Day, to raise money for the Gulf marine life affected by the oil spill.

And we want YOU to join us! Get your family and friends, your Girl Scout troop, your church or office, bake up some ocean-inspired sugar cookies and/or other baked goods, and host a bake sale. OR, head out around your area and encourage your favorite restaurant or bakery to participate by baking and selling said confections and donating proceeds.

July 9, National Sugar Cookie Day, is the official kick-off and we’re baking through the month of July. Hold a BAKE when you can, and make sure you visit the BAKE website and register your BAKE or area eatery’s cookie sale. We’ll also hook you up with the best sugar cookie recipe, ever, a complete tool kit with printable fliers, a donation form, and tips for holding and getting the word out about your own BAKE – and of course, we’ll have BAKE swag for sale in the Bake Shop.

BAKE sale proceeds will go to the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies – www.imms.org. More on all to be posted this weekend, so keep checking back!

LET’S GO BAKE!

Tweet This Post