Heal the Bay Blog

At Heal the Bay we celebrate Earth Day all month long. (Actually, all year long, but who’s counting?)

Throughout the month of April, you’ll probably see us out in the community at Earth Day events all across Los Angeles. We couldn’t possibly fulfill all of the requests we receive from schools, companies and community groups without our Speakers Bureau volunteers, who pitch in to help us spread our message.

We’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate our winter graduating class of Speakers! They devoted three afternoons and one morning to learning about water pollution and solutions and are now trained to answer questions about our work to improve the Santa Monica Bay. An extra big thanks to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) for allowing us to use their beautiful space at the Los Angeles River Center to host our training. If you haven’t visited the L.A. River Center yet, you should definitely go check out this hidden urban gem!

The Los Angeles Lakers tipped off Earth Month by joining us for a beach cleanup at Dockweiler. As if helping us remove 66 pounds weren’t enough, we also received a Lakers Eco All-Star award from East West Bank. We are grateful for the recognition and for the opportunity to share our Earth-friendly message with Laker fans before the game on April 12 at L.A. Live. (Hockey fans: Look for us on April 13 before the Kings game!)

Not to be outdone, Fox Corp. Broadcasting beach cleanupers were small in number, but mighty, with 20 people picking up nearly 100 pounds of trash near the Santa Monica Pier! That’s including the remnants of a romantic interlude with 97 candles and red roses and 2.5 feet worth of cigarette butts (ew!). The week before, Blackstone Consulting brought 22 people to the beach in Santa Monica, removing 42.5 pounds of debris.

Fox is also donating items to the silent auction at our upcoming Bring Back the Beach gala on May 16. Thank you, Fox!

And, as the weather warms, it’s time to start checking the Beach Report Card to make sure the water at your favorite beach is safe, healthy and clean. We thank simplehuman for its longtime support of this public health tool.

Find an Earth Month opportunity near you.

Learn how to take your love of the Earth to the next level, by volunteering with Heal the Bay throughout the year.

Spring has sprung. And for Heal the Bay staffers, that means the beginning of a busy Earth Month 2013.

We kicked off the festivities Saturday afternoon with a special cleanup with the Los Angeles Lakers at Dockweiler Beach. Nearly 100 fans helped remove 66 pounds of ocean-bound debris from the sand and nearby dunes, including a rusted-out shovel and lots of plastic bottle caps.

Laker players Darius Morris and Robert Sacre hustled to Dockweiler following afternoon practice to lend a hand. Even after a long workout, the gracious duo wore big smiles and asked a lot of questions as they marched up and down the sand, blue Heal the Bay buckets in hand.

Morris, a native of nearby Hawthorne, did make one unfortunate discovery. He stumbled upon the carcass of a sea lion pup that had washed ashore, a victim of the wave of unfortunate strandings that has hit Southern California beaches.

Afterward, the players helped out with our raffle, then patiently posed for photos and signed autographs with fans, staff members from sponsor East West Bank and the Heal the Bay crew.

Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to participate in a number of community events with the city’s professional sports teams, including baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, hockey’s Los Angeles Kings and soccer’s Chivas USA.

On April 22, we will be hosting another cleanup with the LA Kings and will be recognized during the game the night before. On April 12 and 13, we also will be participating in an eco-awareness outreach event before Kings and Lakers games at Staples Center and LA Live.

If you can’t make it to any of the games, there are dozens of other Earth Month opportunities with Heal the Bay this April.

Please consider volunteering or becoming a member today.

UPDATE 3/8/2013: After hours of public comment and following decades of the Navy dismissing mitigation requirements for sonar and explosion practices, the Coastal Commission unanimously voted to reject the Navy’s consistency permit! Read the full update here.

The U.S. Navy plans to conduct large-scale naval training exercises involving intense mid-frequency sonar pulses and explosives off the California coast from Orange County to San Diego, extending more than 600 nautical miles out to sea for another five years from 2014 to 2019.

The Southern California coast is home to an estimated 34 species of marine mammals, and the impacts of the training activities are particularly threatening to around 20 of these species because of their endangered status or higher predicted sensitivity to noise. While activities will be concentrated in this area of Southern California, impacts could extend out of the range of activity due to the intensity of the sonar and because dolphins and whales are wide-ranging, so the same animals we see here in the Bay may be directly impacted. The Navy’s planned activities will result in more than 9.5 million instances of harm to whales and dolphins – including nearly 2,000 instances of permanent hearing loss or other permanent injury and more than 150 deaths.

Whales and other marine mammals rely on their hearing for orientation and communication- to find food, companions, a mate, and their way through the ocean. Sounds that are thousands of times more powerful than a jet engine, such as those that would result from the proposed activity, can be devastating, and deadly. Man-made sound waves, or acoustic pollution, can drown out the noises that marine mammals rely on for their very survival, causing serious injury and even death. For more information on the impacts of sonar, go to NRDC’s website. In addition, numerous mass strandings and whale deaths across the globe have been linked to military sonar use. According to scientists, dolphins are projected to be the most impacted species, followed by whales and orcas.

Before these training exercises can begin, the Navy must ask the California Coastal Commission to determine that these activities are consistent with California’s Coastal Management Program. Conducting sonar activities more than 9.5 million times that will harm marine mammals without taking adequate steps to significantly reduce the amount of harm to these and other coastal resources cannot be consistent with California’s Coastal Management Program- whose goal is to protect, preserve, and enhance our coastal environment.

The last time the Navy came before the Commission, the Commission found that these training exercises could only be found consistent if the Navy implemented a set of measures to reduce harm to marine mammals. The Navy refused to comply with the Commission’s recommendations and conducted its training exercises without implementing the measures designed to protect California’s marine resources. Stranded whales are the most visible symptom of the deadly impacts of sonar- over the past 40 years, cumulative research across the globe has revealed a correlation between naval sonar activities and decompression sickness in beached marine mammals. Many of these beached whales show evidence of suffering from physical trauma, including bleeding around the brain, ears and other tissues, and large bubbles in their organs. Scientists believe that the Navy’s sonar blasts may drive whales and dolphins to change their dive patterns- surfacing too quickly, resulting in decompression sickness.

The Navy is poised to do the same thing again. We must bolster the resolve of the Commission and ensure that it continues to stand up to the Navy. Please help us tell the California Coastal Commission that the Navy must do more to protect our coastal resources.

Background materials on the Navy’s Sonar and Munitions Program and the Coastal Commission can be found here.