Our Why

I've always thought of myself as a mermaid on land. The ocean is where I feel most at home, most alive, and most like myself. Choose Ocean was born from that love, but it grew into something much bigger.

It started in 2020, when the world shut down and being together suddenly became something we couldn't take for granted. My friends and I missed each other. We missed the beach. We missed feeling connected. So one day, we grabbed some trash bags and headed to the shore.

We spread out along the sand, picked up trash, and caught up from six feet apart. For the first time in months, we felt close again. We weren't just spending time together. We were doing something that mattered.

What started as a beach cleanup became something we didn't know we were looking for: community.

One beach day became another. A few friends became a crew. And a simple idea grew into Choose Ocean, a community bringing people together through beach cleanups along the California coast.

I believe some of the most meaningful connections happen when we put down our phones, show up for something bigger than ourselves, and discover how much we can accomplish together.

That's what Choose Ocean is really about. It's the friendships made between handfuls of sand and bags of trash. It's strangers becoming friends, small actions becoming habits, and ordinary Saturday mornings becoming something worth remembering.

Because protecting our ocean shouldn't feel like an obligation. It should feel like belonging to something bigger.

The ocean has given us so much: a place to escape, to reconnect, to find ourselves. Choose Ocean is our way of giving something back.

And if we can leave every beach a little cleaner, every community a little closer, and every person a little more inspired to care, then we're creating something that reaches far beyond the shoreline.