Spotted on: Santa Cruz Boardwalk
Occupation: Works for ocean conservation non-profit
What are you up to today?
I'm just walking home from work.
Where do you work?
I work in the Santa Cruz Harbor at an ocean conservation non-profit called Save Our Shores.
How did you get into doing that?
I've been working on plastic pollution for about 7 years—I was working up in San Francisco, and this job opened up and I really wanted to live in this town. So it just worked out!
What are your favorite things to do in the area?
I feel like most people here really enjoy the nature opportunities that Santa Cruz has, so after I get home today I'm going to go stand up paddling right by Steamer Lane. I also like to go on really long walks along the coast, up to the north coast. Basically every opportunity that I have to get outside!
Where is a good place to try stand up paddleboarding around here?
Right here—at Cowell and Main. If you go right next to the wharf, you can paddle around the wharf and look at the sea lions. And if it's calm enough, get closer to the cliff and there's some kelp forests and sea otters. Sometimes I'm out there and there's whales. There are gray whales and humpbacks in the bay right now, and they do get pretty close.
When is the best time to go? Early in the morning or is afternoon pretty calm too?
It depends on the day. If I didn't have to work I'd go early in the morning just because the wind usually picks up in the afternoon, but looks like we're pretty lucky today!
Yeah today is gorgeous! So what do you like most about doing what you do?
I really like that it connects people to the ocean. A lot of people think of our non-profit as saving ocean animals, but really it's connecting people with ways they can be stewards of this beautiful place that we live in. It's nice—it's not like you ever really come across a person in this town who's not interested in protecting the ocean. I think that's why most people live here, so there's a lot of positive relationships with other humans, which is good!
What is something that has caught your interest lately?
Lately I've been making snow globes out of plastic pollution from the beach that I grew up on. I went home a couple of weeks ago to Hawaii where my family is from, and there are tons of tiny bright neon microplastic plastic pollution pieces in the sand. So I collected a lot of them and I started making snow globes out of them. I found a little blog about how to make them on Martha Stewart of all places! And I was thinking, well the plastic does look like snow in terms of it being all broken up in little bits. And also, snow globes are just weird in general.
Yeah, they're a really specific kind of knick knack that people are either really obsessed with or don't want to deal with at all.
Right! Exactly! And I think I fall in the category of I don't really understand what the point of this is. Until I started making them out of garbage, where I'm like, it'd be cool to make a collection of all kinds of weird debris. Snow globes—that's my latest interest!
I also wanted to ask you about what you're wearing today because I'm loving this fun mix of patterns!
When I was growing up, everyone always had to match and I also went to a school with uniforms and I didn't really like matching. I thought that it was kind of ridiculous that you couldn't wear polka dots, and stripes and paisley all at once. I actually think that's more visually appealing and it just breaks up the way your outfit is if you have more than one pattern. Obviously I like really clunky jewelry, I think mostly because I have ADD so I like to play with things that are on my fingers, or necklaces and earrings!
Where did your skirt come from?
Actually I only shop at thrift stores because goes well with the environmental mission of the work that we do. It's amazing what people give up. So, Goodwill, Salvation Army—especially when I was living in San Francisco. Some of the districts had some of the most absurd designer clothing that was probably from the 1960s or 70s, and people are just clearing out their closets. And I get it for $2! So everything is either free piles or Goodwill and I honestly can't remember where all of these different things came from, but they're all used.
