On Sat., Nov. 10th, Surfrider SF chapter has a scheduled beach cleanup at Ocean Beach from 10 A.M. until noon, but obviously, due to the oil spill, there is a much more far-ranging effort to clean up the beach.

Grassroots reports are that very little government assistance has yet been provided to clean up Ocean Beach, and it is community volunteers taking it upon themselves to get the job done.

The main grassroots group is Kill the Spill: http://sfoilspill.blogspot.com.

SurfPulse is not involved in organizing any volunteers and warns that any help you provide is at your own risk. Volunteers at Ocean Beach are reporting health problems: difficulty breathing, burning eyes, sore throats, headaches and dizziness. This is very nasty, toxic stuff that is on the beaches. SurfPulse is providing this information solely as a service to the community.

You can help!

8:00 A.M.--Meet at Great Highway and Noriega.

10:00 A.M.--Meet at Great Highway and Taraval.

Noon to dusk: Meet at Great Highway and Judah.

From one of our readers:
Surfers can DEFINITELY help--there is so much oil on Ocean Beach right now, it is going to take thousands of people, thousands of hours to clean it all up. I just spent 5 hours picking up globs of oil and believe me, the public is needed here. Make no mistake, once you get out here you will realize this an an environmental catastrophe right before our eyes right in our home break. The sooner the oil gets off the beach, the less gets washed back into the ocean and the sooner this will get better. As it is, it's going to be weeks before anyone can surf out here. So please send a message to surfers to come and help clean up our beloved beach. Here's how to do it:
1. Wear old clothes and shoes--they will get oil on them and most likely be ruined.
2. Get some latex (i.e., doctor's) gloves or heavy duty dishwashing rubber gloves.
3. Get a trash bag or, even better, put a trash bag inside of a 5 gallon bucket.
4. Go to the beach and pick up the globs of oil. The globs range in size from smaller than a dime to as big as a jellyfish. The best time to pick them up is when the globs are lying on the wet smooth sand so you can skim the globs together and, because the sand is wet, it doesn't stick to the oil. So this means the best time is medium high tide dropping through low tide through about medium tide. However, if you can't make it then, just go any time as the magnitude of this problem is HUGE and there has been a very limited response so far. Thanks for your help in getting out the message.

Other activists recommend bringing a kitty litter scooper to pick up the globs of oil. Bring as many kitty litter scoopers as possible!

DO NOT PICK UP BIRDS OR OTHER ANIMALS COATED WITH OIL!!
BRING A FULLY CHARGED CELL PHONE TO THE BEACH WITH THE FOLLOWING PHONE NUMBER ENTERED : IF ANIMALS IN TROUBLE SPOTTED, CALL 877.823.6926

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