750 Humboldt County students help restore South Spit dunes, clean coast

Seven hundred fifty Humboldt County students spent the school day restoring dune habitat and cleaning trash from the Mike Thompson Wildlife Area on the South Spit of Humboldt Bay, turning a stretch of public shoreline into a living classroom. After classroom lessons on marine debris and stewardship, the students removed litter and non-native invasive plants, work that helps native species take hold and keeps the dunes healthier for wildlife and people who use the coast.

The cleanup was part of Kids Ocean Day, a statewide marine debris education program funded by the California Coastal Commission and coordinated locally by Friends of the Dunes and the Bureau of Land Management. Friends of the Dunes says the Humboldt program is free for schools and can even pay for buses, removing one of the biggest barriers that can keep students from reaching the coast and participating in hands-on environmental work.

The South Spit site matters because it is not just scenic. It is a public shoreline at the edge of Humboldt Bay, where dune habitat supports coastal plants and animals while also giving residents a place to walk, explore and learn how fragile these systems can be. By pulling weeds and trash from the site instead of simply staging a symbolic beach clean-up, the students did work that directly supports restoration on land that is open to the public and vulnerable to constant pressure from debris and invasive species.

The day also ended with a striking aerial art display created by the students, a visual reminder that stewardship here is meant to be seen. This year’s statewide Kids Ocean Day theme was “Coast for All,” an especially fitting message in a county where the shoreline is part of daily life and where coastal access remains central to the region’s identity. More than 5,000 students took part across five California sites in 2026, including Humboldt County, San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The event came as California marks the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act, first passed by the Legislature on August 23, 1976 and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on September 24, 1976. The law grew out of Proposition 20 in 1972 and remains the legal backbone for protecting the state’s 840-mile coastline, public access and a coast-and-ocean economy valued at $51 billion. In Humboldt, that history took a hands-on form as children cleaned the South Spit and left the dunes better than they found them.