Beaches Drowning in Plastic : Pollution: A study finds that the material is the No. 1 source of beach debris. And coastal communities pay a bundle to clean it up.

Some boaters in Santa Monica Bay refer to them as giant offshore “icebergs.” They are as white as snow, often stretch the length of several football fields and shimmer in the afternoon sun like a sheet of ice.

But Southern California is not Antarctica, and these floating masses are not wayward fragments of pristine glaciers. They are filthy plastic collages of discarded cups, straws, lids, bags, food containers, motor oil bottles and the like--a vivid illustration of what environmentalists have identified as the nation’s most significant marine debris problem.

A recent survey by the Center for Marine Conservation, a nonprofit environmental group based in Washington, concludes that plastic trash is the No. 1 source of debris on beaches from Miami to Santa Monica. A similar study conducted by the center in 1988 reached the same conclusion.

“This trash is fouling our beaches, killing wildlife and costing coastal communities a bundle to clean,” said Jill Kauffman, the center’s Pacific Coast regional director, in releasing the study late last month.

In Los Angeles County, nearly 68% of debris collected and analyzed for the survey was some form of plastic, slightly higher than the national average of 63%. Volunteers, organized by the state Coastal Commission, combed 24 miles of the county’s 75-mile coastline for three hours last September and submitted their findings to the marine conservation center.

On the Westside, they collected data from portions of beaches in Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey and Playa del Rey. In the South Bay, they covered areas of Playa del Rey, Hermosa Beach, Malaga Cove, Royal Palms State Beach and Cabrillo Beach. In Long Beach, the data came from several stretches of the city’s beaches, including the Belmont Shore and Naples areas.

Statewide, volunteers covered 358 miles of coastline for the survey, which analyzed data from 25 states and territories as well as portions of Mexico and Canada. Overall, more than 65,000 volunteers participated in the tally, covering 2,946 miles of coastline--including lakes and oceans--and documenting more than 3 million pieces of debris, according to the marine conservation center.

The center will use the survey data to track sources of beach debris--including beach-goers, vessels offshore and specific businesses that use storm drains as trash cans--and attempt to find ways to eliminate them. Center officials are scheduled to release a follow-up report later this month with proposed recommendations. Another nationwide survey is expected this year, with volunteers hitting California beaches on Sept. 22.

“It is a very good educational tool for beach-goers and community residents,” said Maria Brown, who compiled many of the statistics for the center. “A lot of people are calling and asking how they can become involved in beach cleanups.”

At beaches in Santa Monica and San Pedro bays, local officials say much of the plastic debris identified by the survey is left by beach-goers, who toss aside empty suntan lotion bottles, plastic foam cups, fast-food containers and beverage bottles. During the hot summer months at Santa Monica beach, one of the county’s busiest, maintenance crews hauls away 12 tons of garbage on weekends, city officials said.

“It has gotten worse over the years,” said Santa Monica lifeguard Don Spitler, who has worked the beaches for more than 30 years. “There are just so many more people out there.”

A large portion of the debris, however, comes from millions of Los Angeles-area residents who never set foot on the beach, area environmentalists and government officials say. The sprawling plastic “icebergs” that boaters encounter offshore are actually collections of litter and garbage that have been flushed into the ocean from storm drains, creeks and rivers--not careless sun worshipers.

The plastic rubbish mixes with hamburger wrappers, newspapers, soda cans, cigarette butts, disposable diapers, bottle caps and other trash that has been tossed in streets, gutters and riverbeds as far away as the San Gabriel Valley. During heavy rainstorms, the drains and waterways act as huge siphons, dumping the debris directly into the ocean.

“The paper, plastic and Styrofoam that has bunched together in the storm drains comes out in one big burp,” said Tim Little, community liaison for Heal the Bay, an environmental group based in Santa Monica. “It is like one big toilet flushing all at once.”

In what has become a familiar ritual, cleanup crews from Belmont Shore to Malibu last week retrieved thousands of pounds of trash, which rainstorms flushed into the bays and from which they were eventually deposited onshore. Long Beach maintenance officials said it sometimes takes two weeks to recover from the storm-related debris.

“The surrounding beaches look like a snowstorm hit because of all the plastic and Styrofoam cups,” said Lt. Jerry Shoemaker, a Los Angeles County lifeguard in Hermosa Beach. At the UCLA Aquatic Center in Marina del Rey, Stewart Gilbert spent much of last week in yellow rubber gloves skimming the water with a large fishing net. Gilbert, maintenance supervisor for the boating facility, scooped away at what he described as “a blanket of Styrofoam,” which had gurgled from nearby Ballona Creek, widely regarded as one of the main conduits of marine debris.

“We are trying to encourage UCLA students to sail, not go out into a cesspool,” said Gilbert, who lives in Redondo Beach. “It is just disgusting. We recycle as much garbage as we can here. But it sort of makes you feel helpless. There are just so many people in this town.”

During especially heavy rains, the Los Angeles River, Ballona Creek and some of the larger storm drains also transport large--often bizarre--chunks of trash to the beaches, including refrigerators, stoves, auto parts, couches, bedsprings, construction materials and even Christmas trees. Volunteers last September reported finding a plastic Santa Claus and sleigh, a blow dryer and a prosthetic joint for some unknown limb.

The marine conservation center’s report points an accusing finger at what it refers to as “land-based sources” of beach debris. The report concludes that the general public poses a major threat to beaches and marine life.

“As we learn more about the composition of beach debris, we are finding that marine resources are equally threatened by seemingly small, individual actions, made serious by their numbers, rather than the volume of each--like a tossed plastic cup or a tangle of fishing line,” the report concludes.

Plastic debris is not only an eyesore for boaters and beach-goers, but local and national marine experts say it poses serious hazards to marine life:

Plastic grocery and vegetable bags are often confused for jellyfish and transparent plankton, favorite foods for a variety of sea animals, including whales, dolphins and turtles. The creatures eat the bags but are unable to digest them. Rubber balloons pose a similar risk to the animals, leading Long Beach Unified School District and the state of Florida, among other jurisdictions, to ban mass balloon releases.

“A couple of years ago, a dead dolphin washed up in the Huntington Beach area,” said Little of Heal the Bay. “He seemed fine from all external indications. But when they cut him open they found eight pounds of garbage in his gut. He had eaten his fill.”

Plastic foam cups and food containers, which break up into small foam particles, are ingested by sea gulls and other birds, which confuse them for tiny invertebrates and other food. The birds eventually choke on the particles.

Plastic rings, used to hold six-packs of soda and beer, have been blamed for fish, bird and sea mammal deaths. Fish sometimes become wedged in the rings when young, and are sliced to death as they outgrow the rings. Birds sometimes get caught in the rings and are strangled, and marine mammals can swallow them and choke. As a result, several states--including California--have enacted legislation requiring that six-pack rings be photodegradable, meaning they decompose upon exposure to ultraviolet light.

“There is something about them that intrigues the animals,” said Martin Byhower, a Palos Verdes science teacher who collects data for the Center for Marine Conservation. “People should cut them before throwing them away.”

Plastic bottles become prisons for small marine animals, which die when they cannot escape. Last year, volunteers in Monterey County freed a crab that had crawled into a plastic soda bottle as a baby and grew too large to escape.

“North America’s coastlines and beaches have become a deathtrap for wildlife,” said Kathryn J. O’Hara, director of the marine conservation center’s pollution program. “Whales, dolphins, sea turtles and waterfowl by the thousands die each year due to the entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.”

Although plastic is by far the largest component of beach debris, the marine conservation center’s survey identified other significant contributors. In Los Angeles County, cigarette butts, pieces of paper and glass, metal bottle caps and glass beverage bottles were among the top 12 offenders.

Officials said volunteers in California were particularly alarmed by the number of cigarette butts they collected. Cigarette filters were not listed as an item on data cards provided by the Center for Marine Conservation, but hundreds of volunteers tallied them anyway. Nationwide, 164,141 cigarette filters were recorded, with nearly one-third of them from California.

“We hear over and over about the cigarette filters,” said Jennifer Hightower of the state Coastal Commission, which helped administer the survey in California. “The beach is not a huge ashtray.”

Officials from the marine conservation center classify cigarette butts as plastic because most filters are made of cellulose acetate, a synthetic material. Officials said many people mistakenly believe the filters are paper and will degrade rapidly, perhaps accounting for their willingness to discard them on beaches.

Environmentalists generally agree that the long-term solution to the beach debris problem lies in eliminating trash at the source. Until then, however, cities and counties will continue to pump millions of dollars into cleanup efforts designed to minimize the visual blight and ecological damage caused by the debris, they said.

The County of Los Angeles, which cleans the vast majority of beaches in the county, spends about $3.8 million a year on their maintenance. The county employs 75 people year-round for cleanup and an additional 52 during the summer months. In the past year, the cleanup crews have also gotten help from 2,022 inmates assigned to the beach by the Sheriff’s Department, 1,146 people sentenced by courts to community service at the beach and 637 volunteers just wanting to help.

Last year, county crews used 18 tractors, 23 pickup trucks, five trash trucks, four dump trucks and a variety of related equipment to clean the beaches and haul away 4,000 tons of trash, including rubbish deposited in garbage cans, county officials said.

“We are learning to cope with the litter problem on a broad basis, and we are learning to hold our own,” said Ken Johnson, chief of community services for the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors. “Overall, the beaches are cleaner now than they were certainly 10 years ago, when we had older equipment and not adequate staff.”

In Long Beach, where the city spends about $1.5 million a year to clean its beaches, Beach Maintenance Supervisor Willie McIntyre said his crews sometimes feel they are fighting a losing battle. But, McIntyre said, he reminds them to keep the debris problem in perspective.

“When you are doing maintenance work, trash is one of the key factors in us being employed,” McIntyre said. “If they stop littering, we will have to reduce our staff. I guess you have to have an open mind about the whole thing when you are in maintenance.”

BEACH DEBRIS

Volunteers combed 24 miles of Los Angeles County beaches for three hours last fall as part of a nationwide effort to analyze America’s worsening marine debris problem. Volunteers collected and recorded the trash they found and forwarded their findings to the Center for Marine Conversation in Washington, D.C. Recently, the nonprofit group released its analysis of the 860 tons of debris collected nationwide, including 103.5 tons in California.

Breakdown of beach debris in Los Angeles County: GLASS: 6.67% RUBBER: 1.64% METAL: 7.08% WOOD: 1.74% PAPER: 13.86% CLOTH: 1.03% PLASTIC: 67.98% The Dirty Dozen:

Total number Percent of total debris recorded debris collected 1. Plastic cups/straws 5176 12.10% 2. Small plastic foam pieces 4635 10.83% 3. Cigarette butts 3725 8.70% 4. Paper pieces 3050 7.12% 5. Plastic pieces 2647 6.19% 6. Plastic cups/lids 2608 6.10% 7. Plastic foam cups 1871 4.37% 8. Glass pieces 1645 3.84% 9. metal bottle caps 1456 3.40% 10. Plastic bags 1376 3.21% 11. Trash bags 1058 2.47% 12. Glass beverage bottles 1041 2.43% TOTAL 30,288 70.79%