You can help save the Blue World

The ocean is home to millions of living organisms that use the ocean as their home. They need our help to keep their home livable!

Here are ten things you can do to help protect your local beaches:

1.  Pick up pet waste. Pet waste that gets into the ocean can make the animals and people who use the ocean very sick. Take a few extra minutes of your time to get a bag or pooper-scooper and pick it up to prevent it from getting into the ocean!

2. Use plants that use a very small amount of water in your garden. Using these types of plants helps us keep our beaches clean. The runoff that comes from watering your plants can pollute the ocean, so by not watering your plants as much or at all would help the ocean and its creatures!

3. Make sure your car doesn't leak oil. One quart of motor oil dumped in a storm drain, pollutes 250,000 gallons of water. 16 million gallons of oil run into our oceans every year. By making sure your car doesn't leak oil can prevent sea-life from becoming polluted from fuel users.

4. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle your daily dosage of plastic.  Buy bulk food items not packed in single use plastic containers, and don't use plastic bags. Buy a reusable tote. Also, the plastic strips that connect the soda cans kill many sea animals each year so cut it up so they don't get their heads stuck in them! Reuse your plastics. Clean up an empty plastic water bottle and use it again! Recycle your plastics so it can be used again instead of making more.

5. Be careful where you put your butt. 230,000 cigarette butts were found on California beaches in just one day in the year 2000. On Cleanup Day cigarettes were number one on the list of things that were found. People who do and don't smoke can help out! If you see any cigarette butts laying out anywhere, do the ocean a favor, pick it up and put it in the trash. If you do smoke, please please please throw it away instead of littering. Thank you.

6. Things falling off the outside of your car and things falling out of the inside of your car gets sent to the ocean. Keep your vehicle clean, inside and out! When things leak or fall off your car, and it rains a few weeks or months later, it goes directly into the storm drain. Guess where the storm drain leads to? The Ocean. The one and only Ocean. Polluting it and hurting it's wild life. Even when you open your car and things fall out that you just leave lying on the street, it's sent to the ocean. Make sure your car is in good condition so it doesn't hurt our ocean.

7.  Jump in! Get involved! Join a group to help protect the ocean and make the ocean a cleaner, safer, and better place next time you go hang out at the beach!

8.  Don't use plastics that can only be used one time. Over one hundred thousand sea birds die each year from the cause of eating, swallowing, or getting tangled up in plastics at beaches. Marine litter that is in some form of plastic is 50%.  Plastic shopping bags that are consumed worldwide each year are over one trillion. So reduce, reuse, and recycle!

9. Don't hose down your driveway. Hosing down the driveway pollutes the ocean and wastes water! Fertilizers, pesticides, oil are easily picked up and put into the ocean so don't hose down your driveway!

10. Last but not least, pick up your trash! If you drop something, even if you're not at the beach, pick it up because it can be washed into storm drains and pollute the ocean. If you're at the beach and you see someone litter, tell them to pick it up or you can pick it up yourself. So make sure all your trash ends up in a proper waste bins!