Obama's Beach Cleanup Buddy Appointed to Oversee Great Lakes Restoration

Promote beach protection and take care of your local shores by joining a beach, river or stream cleanup. Check your local government Website to see what you can do in your community, or go to the Ocean Conservancy's Website to join its International Coastal Cleanup.

Photo: Lynn Seeden / Istock

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In case you were on the fence about participating in an upcoming beach cleanup (Monday is, after all, the first-ever United Nations-designated World Oceans Day) here's one more good reason: You might run into the next president.

Ok, that's not likely. But it did happen to environmental activist Cameron Davis, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, when he ran into Barack Obama on a volunteer beach cleanup in Chicago several years ago. Yesterday, Obama appointed Davis to be the first-ever senior EPA adviser on the Great Lakes, coordinating a $5 billion, 10-year restoration plan.

So there you have it. Even if you don't care about picking up litter, or the perilous state of our oceans, you may be able to do some important networking.

If there isn't a beach cleanup scheduled near you for World Oceans Day (and don't forget that every lake, stream and river cleanup is in some way an ocean cleanup, since the water flows to the sea eventually) take heed of these six ocean conservation tips that Oceana is promoting:

1. Keep plastic and garbage out of the ocean when you’re at the beach, on the boat or in the water. Do not use plastic bags. Choose reusable ones and recycle your water bottle. Do your part to collect litter from the beach and clean up after your pets and kids!

2. It all runs into the sea. Stop the over-use of lawn and garden fertilizers because they end up in the oceans and create “dead zones,” pollute coastal wetlands and kill corals.

3. Choose nontoxic products, and take your toxic materials like old paints, solvents, used motor oil and batteries to your hazardous waste collection site.

4. Do not buy bluefin tuna, red coral, endangered sharks or other threatened species. Overfishing of these species is driving them toward extinction.

5. Protect yourself and your family from mercury in tuna fish and other big sea fish like shark and swordfish. Mercury in small amounts has neurotoxic effects in humans and it’s bad for sea life, too!

6. Use your buying power to stop trade in endangered sea life – don’t buy things like coral jewelry, sea turtle shells or shark products.

That last one reminds us of an item we saw just today:

There once was a man from Nantucket
whose business caused quite a ruckus.
The DOJ accused him
of oceans' abusin'
for selling sperm whale teeth as antiques.

Well, close enough: Here's the story.

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