Gathering a group of volunteers in the parking lot at Jenness Beach in Rye, Jen Kennedy held up a clear bag filled with assorted pieces of plastic and trash. The contents, she explained, were found in the stomach of a dead albatross. She left the bag out on display, illustrating the importance of cleaning litter from the beach. Marine debris creates a serious hazard for coastal wildlife. A minke whale once died after becoming wrapped in a plastic box strap that had washed out to sea, she said.
“It really illustrates the fact that you need to pick up even the tiniest pieces of trash on the beach, because a bird could swallow it,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy is director of Blue Ocean Society, which holds monthly cleanups of all the beaches along New Hampshire’s 18-mile coastline. About 20 people, including several children, turned out for the Jenness Beach cleanup on the evening of Aug. 30. They received latex gloves, trash bags and clipboards with data cards for cataloging each and every trash item collected.

“We come out and use the beach, might as well take part in keeping it clean,” said Birdie Carpenter, of Dover, as she scoured the sand for cigarette butts, wrappers and bags. Carpenter and her companion, John O’Hara, of Gloucester, Mass., said they commonly find litter on the beach. “Anything from Styrofoam cups to lobster bait bags to a lot of syringe receptacles. For some reason I see a lot of those. A lot of fishing gloves from fishermen,” O’Hara said.

The most common trash items found on New Hampshire beaches include plastic bags, fishing line, beverage containers, cigarette butts and—most dreaded of all—dog poop. Many of these items wind up washing out to see and threatening marine life in the Atlantic Ocean. But litter also creates unsightly and unsanitary conditions for beachgoers.

“We live in Amesbury, so we’re not that far from the beach, and I love coming here all the time,” said Caroline Haskins, of Amesbury, Mass. She and her husband, David Haskins, are involved with “Friends of Harpoon,” a community service program put together by the Harpoon Brewery, in Boston. They said they are disgusted by the amount of pollution at area beaches.
“It’s just all over the place,” David Haskins said.

“Especially Hampton. It’s really disgusting,” his wife added.

Despite these complaints, the N.H. Department of Environmental Services gave local beaches high marks for cleanliness in the summer of 2007. A statement released by the DES late last month reported that only one coastal beach advisory was posted during the 2007 season. That advisory appeared at the New Castle Town Beach, but the water was deemed safe two days later and the posting was removed.

The DES Beach Program monitors all 15 of the state’s coastal public beaches for bacteria and public health threats, testing water samples on a weekly basis. Advisories are posted on the department’s Web site at www.des.nh.gov/Beaches/current.asp, and reports for past years are available at www.des.nh.gov/Beaches/reports.html.

A nationwide coastal cleanup is scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 14, with Blue Ocean Society orchestrating local efforts. But keeping beaches clean is a year-round endeavor for Kennedy and her teams of volunteers. Surprisingly, many beaches tend to be particularly strewn with litter during the winter, when sand-sifting vehicles are not operating, Kennedy said.

“It just amazes me that every single month there’s stuff to pick up,” said Lisa Evarts, of Londonderry, who participated in the recent Jenness Beach cleanup with her three children. The family has embarked on an initiative to raise awareness about the wildlife threats posed by beach litter. “The kids have been making people aware of the dangers of balloons,” Lisa said as her nine-year-old daughter, Jaidin, displayed three deflated balloons she found in the sand that evening.

Groups of volunteers covered a third of a mile along Jenness Beach, sifting through bundles of seaweed and stretches of sand and depositing pieces of garbage in black trash bags. Team leaders marked each find on yellow cards, dividing the items into three categories: ocean-based debris (such as buoys, fishing nets and traps), land-based debris (such as balloons, six-pack rings and cans) and general sources (such as plastic bottles, Syrofoam cups and bottle caps).

The pungent perfume of organic sea matter wafted onto the shore as dusk approached, but a large showing of surfers and swimmers still lined the beach. Volunteers had trouble identifying some of the litter, occasionally muttering questions like “Is this Mother Nature or trash?” By the end of the cleanup, the teams had collected 53 pounds of garbage, including 891 cigarrette butts.

To volunteer for the coastal cleanup on the weekend of Sept. 14 or other cleanups, call the Blue Ocean Society at 603-431-0260 or visit its Web site at www.blueoceansociety.org. Business groups are encouraged to participate, and town preferences can be specified.