May 6, 2010
Ocean Hero Finalists: Sara Bayles
BY: Emily Fisher
This is the fifth in a series of posts about this year’s Ocean Hero finalists.
Today’s featured finalist, Sara Bayles, is the author of The Daily Ocean blog, which documents her experiment to see how much debris she can collect from her local beach in 365 non-consecutive days.
For 20 minutes at a time she has removed more than 450 pounds of trash from a beach in Santa Monica in just over 110 days. On The Daily Ocean, Sara exposes our dependence on single-use plastic while challenging her readers to make small shifts in their own lives.
Sara and Siel of Green LA Girl organized The Blogger Beach Cleanup this year for 350.org’s International Day Of Climate Action. More than 120 volunteers, 40+ bloggers, and several non-profit groups participated to make the event a success.
Sara is also the volunteer mentor for Team Marine at Santa Monica High School, an award-winning environmental science eco-action group of teens dedicated to raising awareness about the global climate, energy, and plastic pollution crises.
And that’s not all — Sara also participates in the Teach and Test Club at Santa Monica High, co-sponsored by the Surfrider Foundation and Heal the Bay. Teach and Test monitors local ocean samples for potentially harmful bacteria while mentoring middle school students through the process.
You can follow Sara on Twitter at @thedailyocean.
Read about the other fantastic finalists and cast your vote if you haven’t already!