Marine Watchdogs Mission Goals for 2024

Marine Watchdogs is expanding their ocean preservation activities in 2024 with new events, educational media and research.

Their biggest focus this year is on reducing single-use plastic trash. With the equivalent of a truckload of plastic entering the ocean every minute, it’s impossible to remove it fast enough, so the Watchdogs campaign emphasizes eliminating unnecessary disposable plastics to reduce that flow of plastic trash.

The campaign includes a database of biodegradable alternatives to single-use plastic products and public service announcements to promote community awareness and access to ocean-friendly alternatives.

They’re also canvassing businesses like restaurants directly, and leaving flyers requesting that they stop using petroleum-based packaging like Styrofoam cups and plastic utensils.

A letter-writing campaign to California senators, congressmen and other leaders asks them to introduce and support legislation banning certain plastic packaging for which biodegradable substitutes are readily available.

The Marine Watchdogs Ocean Ecology Award promotes plastic reduction and encourages companies to eliminate unnecessary plastic from their business.

Watchdogs’ collaborative group beach cleanup activities so far in 2023 and 2024 have revealed an interesting but painful fact: more of the plastic trash on Central Coast beaches is from kids’ plastic sand toys than any other source, followed by bottle caps and food packaging like plastic spoons.

New free learning games include new ocean puzzles, interactive marine trivia, and sea animal coloring pages for younger kids.

In addition to plastic and plankton studies, Watchdogs’ research this year includes adding additional data points to the Pacific Pisaster Sea Star Map, which marks locations where intertidal Pisaster ochraceus sea stars are spotted. This keystone species was decimated to near-extinction in 2013, and marine biologists are anxious to see them come back.

Ongoing public services Marine Watchdogs provides include seafood contamination alerts, a marine conditions dashboard, a calendar of worldwide ocean events, an ocean crimes hotline, and live beach cams across the California coastline.