The students stood side-by-side to form a message on the sand: Share Joy.

It was their statement after a morning at Huntington State Beach about the importance of keeping beaches and the ocean clean.

“They feel they can send that message to their communities,” said Dyana Peña, deputy director of programming for Orange County Coastkeeper.  “If the kids can do it, so can everyone else.”

Hundreds of students from nine inland Orange County elementary schools visited Huntington Beach on Tuesday, May 31, for Kids Ocean Day, the first time in three years the educational program has been held in person.

The lesson starts in the classroom and ends on the sand where the students take action on what they’ve learned about pollution and the marine environment.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am we’re back. Nothing beats having the kids out on the sand and seeing how happy they are to get to enjoy the day out here,” Peña said.

There was plenty of trash to pick up following the holiday weekend. Food wrappers and straws dotted the shore, along with plastics, cigarette butts and the other “usual culprits,” Peña said.

Kids Ocean Day was started in 1994 by environmentalist Michael Klubock, a sailor frustrated and saddened by the amount of trash out in the ocean.

Klubock started going to schools in the Los Angeles area, delivering slideshow lectures on how trash funnels from inland storm drains and gathers on beaches and gets out into the ocean, hurting wildlife. Then, kids would load up on buses and get their hands dirty with beach cleanups, seeing first-hand the devastation of how trash that often started as street litter miles inland later impacts the coastline.

Klubock’s efforts grew when he teamed up with the California Coastal Commission, Coastkeeper and other environmentally focused organizations that could help organize and fund the program.

To date, more than 700,000 students have participated in the classroom program along the California coastline.

Many of those students get to have an annual field trip to the beach. For some, it’s the first time they’ve ever walked on sand or seen the ocean.

Last week, about 3,000 students from Los Angeles area schools hit the beach at Dockweiler State Beach. They shared the message  “J️OY in Nature.”

This week students visited the shore from Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Orange.

“I’m so impressed by how ready they were to start picking up trash,” Peña said. “You’d expect they’d want to start by playing in the sand – they get right to what they are here to do, which is amazing.”

Within the first 30 minutes, one school had already filled up a big bag of debris. By noon, 115 pounds had been removed by the kids.

Peña said she hopes the students take the day’s experience home to share with friends and family.

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“I think it’s also very important to have this opportunity to make connections with the natural environment, so they have a reason to take care of it,” she said. “If they have a good memory from the beach, they will take action.”