Have you ever walked along a beautiful beach and been surprised to find a piece of plastic at your feet? Unfortunately, we’ve all just started to accept it. I think that’s wrong!

I have always loved going to the beach, whether it’s a Zuma family beach day or snorkeling in Hawaii. I would like create awareness for the health of our ocean and help to protect its future, To achieve this goal, I’ve partnered with the Ocean Conservancy as my Mitzvah Project.

A mitzvah is the act of doing a good deed, big or small. As a Jewish adult you are supposed to do a mitzvah on a daily basis. Part of becoming a bat mitzvah is to have a mitzvah project to begin the start of doing mitzvahs on a day-to-day basis.

I chose Ocean Conservancy because of all the amazing things they are doing and willing to do for our oceans. A healthy ocean means more than beautiful coasts and vibrant ocean wildlife. If the ocean isn’t healthy, neither are we. Because the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we’re breathing this very second comes from our ocean.

We are in danger of losing what makes the ocean such an important and special place to so many of us, who rely on it for livelihoods, food, recreation and moments of wonder.

The Ocean Conservancy has been working for over forty years to protect ecosystems, defend major legislation, and enforce accountability of leaders and legislators. They have rallied the world’s largest efforts to remove trash from our beaches because they believe that a happy ocean is a happy planet. They defend and protect the ocean from every angle from their headquarters in D.C; working to get laws passed, protecting important ones, to having millions of helpers all around the world picking up trash along the coastlines and in their oceans. They help create sustainable ocean-based climate solutions, working with all levels of government to put these solutions to work and build demand for climate action. The Ocean Conservancy is doing everything in their power to protect and clean our oceans and need our help to do so.

Some facts you should know:

We have more than 13,000 miles of coastline in the U.S. and more than 3 million square nautical miles of ocean, an area greater than all 50 states combined!

In order to protect our communities, ocean and planet, we must work to limit global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial temperatures. This means reducing greenhouse gas pollution—including carbon dioxide emissions, which cause not only warming but also ocean acidification—to net-zero no later than 2050.

From plankton to whales, animals across ocean ecosystems have been contaminated by plastic. Plastic has been found in 59% of sea birds like albatross and pelicans, in 100% of sea turtle species, and more than 25% of fish sampled from seafood markets around the world.

Every year, 11 million metric tons of plastics enter our ocean on top of the estimated 200 million metric tons that currently circulate through our marine environments. Ocean Conservancy has been at the forefront of the ocean plastics challenge for more than 35 years, having picked up more than 348 million pounds of trash in the last 35 years.

I hope that one day our oceans and coastlines will be trash and plastic free and we will be able to enjoy a beach day without going around and picking up trash.

With your help, we can solve the ocean plastic crisis together. Please help me by donating today!