One Morning. Three States. Five Cleanups.
Saturday, April 22, was a busy day on the Gulf of Maine coast for those passionate about protecting marine life. We were thrilled to have so many volunteers gather for our Tristate Earth Day Cleanup event presented by Kennebunk Savings, which spanned six beaches in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
Over 15,000 pieces of debris were collected and tallied, weighing just under 1,500 pounds! We record the debris we find at cleanups to better understand marine debris issues on a local scale and identify appropriate solutions.
We found lots of the typical, expected items like cigarette butts, plastic bottles and containers, metal cans, and fragments of glass, plastic, and foam. We also found several items that weren’t quite so typical, including an inflatable kayak that had been abandoned due to several large holes and various construction materials, such as pieces of metal wire, roofing shingles, and pieces of stray lumber.
An Earth Day Recap
The day began with volunteers gathering at 8 am to clean Newbury Beach on Plum Island in Newbury, MA. This group collected over 1,000 debris items from the beach. Plum Island received a lot of love on Earth Day! Blue Ocean Society volunteers cleaned the northern half of this beach, and our friends at Surfrider Foundation cleaned the southern half the next day.
The northernmost cleanup of the day was at Old Orchard Beach in Maine, co-hosted by Maine Conservation Alliance. Over 100 volunteers combed the sandy shore collecting more than 3,000 items, one-third of which were cigarette butts. On the right, you can see a volunteer weighing his bag of trash in a repurposed bag using a luggage scale.
The cleanup in Wells, Maine was the largest of the day in both participation and debris collected! Almost 200 dispersed along the Wells coastal area to clean Wells Beach, Wells Harbor, Drake’s Island, Moody Beach, and Mile Road. They collected over 1,000 pounds of debris, amounting to a total count of over 6,000 items!
At Peirce Island in Portsmouth, these volunteers collected over 50 pounds of debris, most of which was cigarette butts, plastic and glass pieces, plastic wrappers, packaging material, and plastic beverage bottles, and plastic film (thin, flexible plastic).
The final cleanup of the day wrapped up the Rescue Run hosted at Odiorne Point State Park by Seacoast Science Center and Marine Mammal Rescue. Over 100 people gathered to clean the rocky shore, collecting over 300 pounds of debris! The strangest item found at this cleanup was individually packaged pills.
Thank You
A big thank you to everyone who hit the beach to fight for cleaner seas with us! Five hundred of you showed up for marine life, preventing debris from washing out to sea and reducing threats it poses to marine life through ingestion and entanglement.
Thank you to our many partners who made this impactful day possible.
- Maine Conservation Alliance
- Wells Police Department
- The Refill Station
- Green Maids
- Seacoast Science Center Marine Mammal Rescue
We would also like to recognize our Earth Day Cleanup sponsors.
These cleanups were conducted with support from Ocean Conservancy.
Learn More
- Read our latest Adopt-A-Beach feature
- Learn about the debris we collected at 500 cleanups in 2022
- Adopt a whale and get notified when our research staff spot it while on the water this summer!
