Forum on March 18th at 6:15pm at Live Oak Elementary School 1916 Capitola Rd.

Free and open to the public.

Santa Cruz Water Department and Soquel Creek Water District are planning to build a desalination plant, to serve Santa Cruz and Live Oak residents in dry years, and Soquel District customers in all other years. Soquel District wants to reduce pumping from the aquifer, which they report is in danger of seawater contamination from over-pumping.

It’s up to our community to decide the desalination issue. The sponsoring organizations want to get feedback from people who attend the forum.  Sarah Mansergh of Surfrider explains, “Turning sea water into fresh water through this energy intensive process is a significant new step for this community. It’s important that people are fully informed of the consequences.”  The organizers will poll people who attend on their opinions about the desalination plant as a core component of our local water policy.

On Saturday February 13th, over 30 volunteers came to support Save Our Shores' river cleanup efforts. SOS hosted a cleanup on Branciforte Creek where volunteers collected over 1,000 pounds of trash and over 400 pounds of recycling! Volunteers removed everything from couches, chairs, a bed frame, vacuums, tarps, shopping carts, electrical wires, batteries, car parts, cans, bottles, and lots of plastic items. Thank you to those who showed their support for our local watershed and made this creek cleanup such a huge success!

Terry McCormac , a photographer, caught this alarming photo recently at Moss Landing.  Obviously the pup swam head first into a plastic bag and its mom is attempting a rescue.

YOU can save otters from chewing through plastic by joining Save Our Shores !

Your support today will
Work directly at sites to minimize the amount of discarded trash that can hurt sea otters .  . . 
Shows individuals  how they can prevent this from happening even before visiting their local beaches . .
And create an environment where this can not happen at all!

THANK YOU!

When planning your next vacation, think of Save Our Shores.  Visit Gift of Travel and the trips you book with them will benefit Save Our Shores! 

Click here and 4% of the total cost of your trip booked through Gift of Travel will be donated to Save Our Shores. 

Give back to the ocean this New Year by joining the Sanctuary Stewards Docent Program.
Exclusive lectures and fun field trips will prepare you to be the voice of our beaches.
Join the SOS volunteer team by applying today, the program starts soon!  More information under our volunteer program links.

To apply please click here.

When: December 16th 6:30pm-9:30pm
Where: Rio Theater 1205 Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz
Who: Save Our Shores, FishWise, Ocean Conservancy, Greenpeace, New Leaf Community Market and Assemblymember Bill Monning

Imagine an ocean without fish. Imagine your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This is the future if we do not stop, think and act.
The End of the Line is the first major feature documentary film revealing the impact of overfishing on our oceans.  In the film we see firsthand the effects of our global love affair with fish as food. It examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna, the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish and the profound implications of a future world with no fish that would bring certain mass starvation. Watch the trailer.

Click here to see the data of what was collected on Annual Coastal Cleanup Day in Santa Cruz County.

The 25th Annual Coastal Cleanup Day marked the largest community wide cleanup effort in Santa Cruz County to date. 3,802 volunteers removed 9,012 pounds of trash and 3,903.5 pounds of recycle from our local beaches, rivers, sloughs, and kelp beds.

Save Our Shores offered 50 cleanup sites throughout the County including beach, river, slough, kayak, SCUBA, and paddle boarding sites. By far our river sites yielded the most trash in pounds, while volunteers down on the beach collected thousands of smaller pieces of debris such as cigarette butts, plastic pieces, and Styrofoam pieces.

Thanks to over 1,200 students in Santa Cruz, our volunteer capacity has grown significantly. We are proud of our local students and commend them on their hard work and dedication to keeping our ocean healthy. Additionally, we had many more local businesses get involved this year by sending employees down to our cleanup sites.

Save Our Shores, along with Oceana and others, organized a Sanctuary Mayor's Ocean Summit meeting with the aim of gathering all Mayor’s from along the Monterey Bay Sanctuary and further to discuss the threat that plastic poses to our communities and ways to combat single-use plastic items. 13 Mayor’s signed a Pledge to “work together and in our communities reduce and eliminate polystyrene and single-use plastic bags."

Mayor’s, City Managers, and representatives from environmental nonprofits attended the Summit on August 28th in Watsonville. Attendees included Walter Rob, co-president of the Whole Foods, U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, Assemblyman Bill Monning and former Assemblyman John Laird. Cynthia Mathews, Mayor of Santa Cruz, was also in attendance. Click here for the official website from the summit.