Mea Marvin | Writer
September 21, 2023
San Clemente is a very close knit ocean community. To many people, surfing and the beach is a big part of their everyday life. But it is hard to enjoy the sound of the waves and the soft sand when it is covered with cans and plastic. At San Clemente High School, Emily Ohman and Taylor Van Dijk are co-presidents of Blue Oceans Club, which gives students the opportunity to help make their home a bluer place.
At beach cleanups, the club meets at the bottom of the stairs at T-Street. They provide bags and gloves, and everyone disperses in smaller groups to pick up the trash. Everyone comes back together after an hour, and drops off the bags of trash they collected at the place they began. Taylor and Emily provide hook scales that can weigh the total amount of trash gathered that day. At the last beach clean up, held on Sunday the 17th, the club collected 58 pounds of trash off of T-Street beach.
One of the co-presidents, Emily Ohman, speaks to the meaning behind her club. She expressed that “it is super important for our community to keep our beaches clean because we spend so much of our time there.” She emphasized that it truly brings us together as a community, or even a family, here in San Clemente.
Not only is this club helping keep our beaches clean, but Emily also pointed out how “the ocean is such an important ecosystem and doesn’t just benefit humans, it also benefits the marine life that lives in our area and preserves their habitats.”
Emily and Taylor encourage other students to come out and get involved. It isn’t a super huge commitment, and it “provides a great and easy opportunity for students to get service hours,” Emily pointed out.
Clubs such as Blue Oceans help get students involved in school life, make new friends, and give students tools, such as service hours, to help them get into college. Not to mention, a club like this “feels really rewarding to be able to serve the community and see immediate results and is great way to give back.”
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