We are a group of eco-minded students from Santa Monica High School who participate in various ocean stewardship/environmental science competitions, such as the QuikSCience Challenge, Edison Challenge, and the Solar Cup. We try to raise awareness about the global marine debris, energy and climate change crises through different service learning and community outreach projects. Team Marine was started and is coached by our Marine Biology teacher Benjamin Kay.

Team Marine 08-09 in Edison Challenge: After attending numerous conferences, workshops and lectures to educate ourselves, we taught community members about marine debris, storm drain transport and runoff, sustainable products and practices, renewable energies, and global climate change. Our eco-projects included beach clean ups, a school-wide plastic bottle cap drive, erecting a REthink Art Display on the 3rd St. Promenade made out of the collected 34,727 bottle caps, organizing two student marches against single-use plastic products, testifying at City Hall to express our support of the ban on plastic bags from all retail stores in SM, building a solar-powered boat for the Solar Cup, joining Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots Program to spread our ideas and network, partnering with the Surfrider Foundation in their Teach and Test ocean water quality monitoring program, advocating for the preservation of the Ballona Wetlands, restructuring the website to facilitate updates by future Team Marine, presenting at several gatherings including a Generation Earth Water Pollution Prevention Workshop, and teaching at several different schools.

Team Marine 07-08 in QuikSCience Challenge: We attended many conferences, workshops, and lectures to teach ourselves about sustainable living and the effects of plastic on marine life. We attended beach cleanups, conducted a plastic bag drive at our school, displayed a REthink Art Piece on the beach near the bike path using the collected 111 lbs of plastic bags, testified at City Hall to persuade city council members to ban single-use plastic bags from retail stores in SM, organized two student marches to promote reusable bags over plastic bags, hosted and presented in a Generation Earth Water Pollution Workshop, created the Team Marine environmental website, made a humorous environmental educational video that we posted on Youtube, and organized and presented in Focus the Nation Day at Santa Monica High School to raise awareness about global climate change and plastic pollution in the ocean, performed an eco-check survey at 8 local grocery stores to see which one carried the most bio-friendly products, and conducted a survey of plastic pollutants before and after a storm. We won 1st Place in the QS challenge and won an all expenses paid trip to Cozumel, Mexico.

Team Marine 06-07 in QuikSCience Challenge: We were the "guinea pigs," the first Team Marine ever!!! We conducted a school-wide recycling survey involving 1050 of our peers, and after finding that many of our peers either didn't recycle or know what to recycle, we organized and presented in a school assembly with a recycling expert, Neil Guglielmo. We also organized a beach clean-up with 100 participants and later sorted, counted, and weighed all trash categories. Furthermore, we presented our recycling lesson plan and skit to several local schools and congregations, and made an iDVD movie of our environmental work (soon to be posted on Youtube by Team Marine 08-09). We won Best Community Service in the QS Challenge.

The solutions to the problems of Global Climate Change and Marine Debris start with the average citizen. Most may think that Global Climate Change is an insurmountable problem for one human to help, but it is small things that the everyday person does that makes the biggest impact. Global Climate Change is caused by the build up of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere, so what the average American can do is drive a low emission car, install a CFL light bulb, support alternative energies such as solar and wind, and incorporate the 5 R's in your daily lifestyle. Marine Debris kills over one million marine animals every year, 90% of it is plastic, and it is littering our beautiful beaches.