4-24-15
Nathan Schaeffer

Our Beaches

The East and West Elwha Beaches are what the Natural Resources group mainly focuses on. We get a lot of trash from our marine debris pick ups, we walk all the way across the beach from one side to the other and pick up any trash we find. Sometimes its hard because we have a small group of people doing it but we do our best. Having the beaches clean is a huge part it allows people to go out with there kids or anyone and walk around barefoot without being to hesitant because of trash. we help keep it a nice beach and a place people want to go to have fun and see what our environment is doing. across from that we record all of the data to know what the marine mammals are doing and the birds it helps us know what is going on in the environment and our data helps us figure out where the trash is coming from. on shore trash is from us and people on land leaving there trash or storms and off shore is from boats or hatcheries anything that looses trash out in the ocean and washes up on the beaches. for more of a visual and some more information on marine debris and our beaches check out a link to a poster one of the students made. http://www.nopsc.org/natural-resources/projects/poster/finish/18-posters/125-lorenmarinedebris.html

4-24-15

My Experience in Beach cleanup and Stream Keepers.

I went out not to long ago with a small crew and cleared black berry bushes from Valley Creek 1.0. At first I hated it of course but as we got into it I felt good knowing I am helping keep the stream clear. Enabling people to walk down to the creek without being stabbed by the invasive plants. There were a lot of them everywhere especially on the banks and where people walk down to the creek. It’s not a huge help but its helping and people don't realize what this class does. They don't notice that we test the waters that some kids play in and keep data on the fish. The people who are volunteers are really the good people they are taking their time out of there day just to help us kids and help with the creeks flowing through our town. Apart from stream keepers there is our beach class. We go out to West and East Elwha Beaches and do marine debris pick up. We pick up any trash we see and do a 100 meter cleanup and record the data so we know what's going on across the beaches and in the water with the marine mammals and birds. We keep the beaches clean of rusty cans and anything else you could hurt yourself on or kids anyone we make it pretty safe to walk barefoot. Without this class I wouldn't be able to graduate and the creeks and beaches would be a lot worse off than they are now.