Volunteers Clean Second Beach

It was a day at the beach, but the activities were quite different from the sandcastle-building, swimming, or surfing of an August day. At Middletown’s Second Beach today, several dozen volunteers scrubbed the beach by hand, picking up such detritus as fishing line, Styrofoam, plastic wrap, and odds and ends like rugs and lobster traps. Everything went into garbage bags that Clean Ocean Access had provided. The Newport-based group, formed several years ago by local surfers concerned about coastal access and water quality, organizes a beach cleanup once a month between September and May.

At the cleanup today, about a dozen seniors from Portsmouth High School participated, with their teacher, Elaine Amaral, who teaches physics and oceanography. “It’s part of being responsible stewards of the environment,” says Amaral, who awards extra credit for students who work at the cleanups.

Another crew had much younger participants: Brian Hawkins, of Middletown, was there with his sons, Grayson, 3, and Owen, 5. “We spend a lot of time here at Second Beach in the summer,” said Hawkins, a surfer.  “We love the beach, and this is an opportunity to help.”