California

In 2020, I began my California Sea Grant Extension Fellowship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program. I was brought on to help the California Regional Coordinator implement marine debris projects and strategies in California. Over the course of my fellowship, I had the opportunity to lead a statewide marine debris action plan, support strategic internal efforts, and partake in countless professional development opportunities. This experience has improved my confidence as a young professional, guided my career path, and has certainly prepared me for my next chapter and future career.

Staff, faculty, and students at California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) Santa Rosa Island Research Station have been working to monitor and remove marine debris from portions of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz Islands since 2015. With support from the NOAA Marine Debris Program, over 7,500 pounds of debris have been removed from the islands since 2020. This three-year project is an extension of past research and collaborative efforts of partners across the Channel Islands. CSUCI invited the NOAA Marine Debris Program California Regional Coordinator and the program’s California Sea Grant Extension Fellow for a week-long site visit to remove and assess the amounts, types, and sources of marine debris on Santa Rosa Island.

Much of San Francisco’s beauty comes from its stunning location, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. San Francisco is also the second-most densely populated city in the United States and one of the country’s most-visited destinations. With so many people near so much water, the marine environment is especially vulnerable to all forms of human-made pollution, including cigarette butts, the most littered item in San Francisco and around the world.

About 70% of Californians believe their ocean and beaches are very important to California’s future and report that plastics and marine debris are a big problem on a coast near them. As a result, organizations, individuals, and volunteers from across the state are contributing an enormous and noble amount of time and energy to make California a national leader on addressing and preventing marine debris.

Consistent shoreline monitoring and data gathering efforts are essential to understanding local marine debris issues, how they change over time, and what types of debris are most common. Between 2012 and 2018, monthly marine debris monitoring surveys were conducted at six Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary beaches, located on the North-Central California Coast near San Francisco, and identified shotgun wads as one of the four most commonly found plastic items across all surveyed sites. A project to reduce plastic shotgun wad debris from entering San Francisco Bay and depositing onto coastal beaches was carried out and is documented in the report, “A Behavior Change Campaign to Reduce Plastic Shotgun Wad Debris on the North-Central California Coast.”

The Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is one of the NOAA Marine Debris Programs’s longest running Marine Debris Monitoring and Assessment Project partners. Six years of data collection at locations along the Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo county coastline revealed the types and frequency of marine debris on the surveyed shorelines, as well as one particularly interesting and problematic type of debris. The survey data indicated that shotgun wads, the plastic piece inside a shotgun shell that separates the shot from the powder, are one of the top ten most commonly found plastic items on all surveyed beaches.

Although plastic pollution is not a new phenomenon, concerns over the environmental and human health implications of microplastics, or plastic pieces less than 5 mm in size, has grown rapidly over the past decade. These concerns stem from their potential to be ingested by wildlife, accumulate in animal bodies, and transfer contaminants up the food chain, as well as their widespread presence in the environment.