Santa Monica High School’s Team Marine students last weekend and early this week were busy “eco-educating and eco-activating” themselves at back-to-back events.
Samohi Team Marine students Aubrey Dondick, Max Rothblatt, Hannah Persinko, Julian Apter, Brian Samimi, Rudy Balderrama, and William Taylor traveled by van to and camped in Sacramento near the Capitol building in order to attend Ocean Day this past Tuesday, March 24.
The day was dedicated to lobbying various state representatives for clean sea legislation and culminated with a meeting with former Santa Monica Mayor and current Assemblyman Richard Bloom (50th District).
The Sacramento trip was a crash course in government and politics for the students, all of whom celebrated the opportunity to voice their opinions and background knowledge of the science on plastic pollution, fracking, and climate change.
Meanwhile four students — Angelina Hwang, Aubrey Dondick, Eleanor Reynolds, and Max Rothblatt — applied and were accepted to attend the Plastic Ocean Pollution Solutions (POPS) International Youth Summit.
This event is sponsored by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, wherein they got to meet environmental activist and musician Jack Johnson and renown scientists and advocates Wallace “J” Nichols, Anna Cummins, and Captain Charles Moore among others.
