By Maddy Vitale
A hula hoop, coal from old shipwrecks and even underwear, were just some of the unusual items that turned up in Saturday’s Beach Sweep around Music Pier in Ocean City.
More than 300 participants lined up throughout the morning into the early afternoon to get their rubber gloves and trash bags and hit the sands in search for litter during the 33rd annual Spring Beach Sweep hosted by Clean Ocean Action.
“There has been a wonderful response this year,” said Charlotte Moyer, office supervisor for Ocean City Public Works, while flipping through data collection cards filled out by volunteers. “The weather helps. We started our adopt-a-beach program again and almost every beach is adopted out of roughly 80 beaches.”
Moyer read off some items from different data cards.
“Volunteers found gloves, balls, roof shingles and a switch plate,” Moyer said.
And then there were some other finds that weren’t for those with weak stomachs.
“Someone found sea gull parts,” she said.
Coastal Christian in Ocean City adopted Moorlyn beach, taking on the responsibility of cleaning it once a week.
On Saturday Diana Wiseman from Coastal Christian said they started around 9 a.m. and picked up lots of plastic bottles and bags.
Jim Kolea, of Coastal Christian, joked with the kids as they searched the beach for debris.
“We do it once a week,” Kolea said. “It is all about community service. This is our beach. We adopted it. We are always looking for volunteers to help us.”
For Trish Marchesani and Ed Vilsmeier, of Washington Township, it was a day of plastic bag collecting.
“Plastic bags were the winners today,” Ed Vilsmeier said.
Then there were some interesting finds.
Ken Stronski and his daughter Alexa, 14, of Sewell found the typical garbage, loads of cigarettes, bottles and bags and even broken glass.
“I always say when we pick up things like the glass we help people from going to the infirmary,” Ken Stronski said.
There was one cool find Stronski wanted to keep.
“We found a key. It had a cross on it. I didn’t want to throw it away, but I figured we would never find the door it went in,” Ken Stronski joked.
While people Philip Schreiber and Kevin Gale, both Public Works employees were getting ready to make their second run to unload more litter that volunteers discovered on the beaches Saturday morning.
The two expected to make several more trips to the dump before the afternoon.
Young couple Michael and Melissa Downs, of Swedesboro, brought their 5-year-old daughter Kaileigh to pick up debris.
They picked up a lot of bags and cigarettes.
Kaileigh also found some treasures she stored in her pocket.
“Do you want to see my shells?” she asked before pulling out a shiny white shell.
