2025 Wrap Up

With another incredible hard working year of data collecting and organizing, Save Our Shores is proud to present the outcome of productivity we’ve accomplished alongside our volunteers!

Our Team and New Beginnings

Last year, our team greeted two new interns Riana Prieto as the Data Advocate Intern who joined us in the fall and Asa Chavarro as the Communications and Social Media Intern who recently joined us this past January. We also welcomed Oli Wickett and Santiago Meza joining the Education team to lead implementation of our education programs. They all have contributed to many wonderful projects within Save Our Shores, and we are more than thrilled to have them help us keep the Bay clean and thriving. 

Community Cleanup Efforts 

Thanks to your support, we managed to coordinate 155 localized beach, river, and watershed cleanups. We also triumphantly removed 13,378 pounds of trash from our beloved Monterey Bay, decreasing its negative impact on our marine ecosystems. Excitingly within this period, 4,620 volunteers joined these events and made it all happen and contributed 10,269 hours of their time to help foster a thriving Bay. We are very grateful to see our community’s dedication to protecting and taking care of our environment. 

Public Outreach and Youth Education Programs

Along with beach cleanups, we engaged our community through public outreach events. This year, we teamed up with 24 schools in 11 school districts to connect with 1,328 students in ocean conservation curriculum about the importance of Monterey Bay Sanctuary, plastic pollution, and how they can do their part in their everyday life. 

Advocacy Efforts

In 2025, we started the campaign to fight the federal government’s plan to open offshore drilling development in California waters. We were also part of a coalition that worked with local jurisdictions to secure the first policy in the world that prohibits the scale of filtered tobacco products. In 2025, we collected 23,346 cigarette butts off of our beaches! This landmark action confronts one of the most pervasive forms of plastic pollution at its source. 

Read more about our 2025 achievements in our annual report.