It was a dreamy day at the 23rd annual Kids Ocean Day. Like in years past, more than 4,000 kids, teachers and volunteers scoured the sand at Dockweiler State Beach, picking up pieces of plastic and other litter, before forming an aerial art display. This year’s aerial art highlighted the diversity of the ocean by having each of the 33 schools form their own individual expression of the sea. We saw schools form bubbles, starfish, dolphins and even an octopus to create a seascape across the sand.
Kids Ocean Day was founded in 1993 by the Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education to inspire Los Angeles children to protect and honor the ocean with a day of service. This year also inspired them to honor the ocean with the spoken word in the first-ever Kids Ocean Day poetry contest. The theme was “Dreaming of a Litter-Free Ocean.” It asked kids to think, what would a plastic-free ocean look like? What difference would it make to our world and to life below the sea?
The winning poem, “The Ocean…What a Motion,” was crafted by Amin Biya, a fifth grader at Crescent Heights Elementary School, who bravely took the stage at the press conference to recite his poem by heart. When asked what inspired him to write such beautiful verse, he said simply, “the ocean and all the things in the ocean…and things that rhyme.”
Listen to Amin practice his winning poem before the press conference.
The Ocean… What a Motion!
By Amin Biya
If there was trash free sand
It would make the beach more grand
There are probably a ton of fish
Who have that wish
Deep in the ocean
There is a great motion
Predators and prey
And a big, giant fish with large teeth and the skin of grey
But here comes the trash
Which makes the food chain crash
There are lives at stake
This is just too much to take
So next time when you go to the beach
Pick up trash and happiness will be at your reach
