Story and photos by Sophia Wiener
SEA BRIGHT – The Clean Ocean Action (COA) Spring Beach Sweeps happen annually, rain or shine – and last Saturday it was most definitely rain.
The organizers delayed the event’s start from 9 to 11 a.m. and shortened it from three hours to just two. But even in that amount of time, hundreds of volunteers braved rain, gusts of wind, billowing trash bags and a chill that demanded winter coats to clean up tens of thousands of pieces of litter at nearly 80 sites across New Jersey.
In the Two River area, volunteers cleaned up Sea Bright, Middletown, Red Bank, Rumson, Highlands and Sandy Hook beaches.
At Sea Bright’s Public Beach Pavilion, the most popular of Sea Bright’s three sweeps sites, approximately 20 volunteers showed up to help keep the community clean and attractive. Teenagers from COA’s Student Environmental Advocate and Leadership program arrived in pairs with their friends, taking turns holding trash bags and filling out worksheets with litter data for COA. Families showed up and balanced cleaning trash with cajoling their kids to stop playing near the large, slippery rocks.
Several members of the Sea Bright Fire Rescue team, located just across the street, participated. As they used calipers to fill buckets with the snack bags, pieces of plastic and other debris that collect beneath the boardwalk, they discussed the possibility of Sea Bright hosting more frequent beach sweeps.
The semi-annual event – COA holds fall beach sweeps, too – doesn’t just help keep beaches and oceans cleaner. COA analyzes the data and uses it as hard evidence to help convince officials to pass laws to lower the amount of debris in oceans and other bodies of water, bringing us one step closer to a world where beach sweeps aren’t necessary.
The article originally appeared in the April 17 – 23, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
