Shorelines are covered in garbage. These MAST alums are doing something about it

During a surfing trip to Nicaragua in February 2019, MAST Academy alumni, Theo Quenee, 22, and Coby Barreras, 22, who both reside in Coconut Grove, realized that the vast amount of water and shoreline pollution was as common in underdeveloped areas as it was in South Florida.

“We realized that everywhere around the world is facing the same problem, no matter what type of infrastructure there is,” said Quenee.

“When we came back, we wanted to continue the cleanup efforts that were happening here locally,” he said.

He and Barreras started the environmental nonprofit Sendit4thesea in April of 2019.

Since then the group’s volunteers have picked up around 36,000 pounds of trash doing shoreline cleanups.

“We really wanted to engage the younger people in Miami to come out, so that’s what led us to start Sendit4thesea,” said Quenee, who works as a freelance photographer and videographer. brings together 70 to 80 volunteers, but for bigger cleanups, like at Bayfront Park, as many as 500 volunteers have shown up, says Quenee.

He says that December 29, 2020, was the day that volunteers picked up the most amount of trash at a cleanup: 2,477 pounds at Bayfront Park, over a ton of garbage.

Once they sorted out all of the trash they counted 11,514 bottle caps, 6,725 straws and 1,635 plastic water bottles, among other single-use plastic items.

“I think that everything we do has an impact,” says Quenee.

“Whether it’s your packaging as a restaurant owner if you’re creating waste through your take-out goods. Maybe it’s a Jet Ski rental company that’s not teaching their clients about what to do or what not to do when you’re in a seagrass bed,” he says.

“I think if everyone was just a little bit more conscious about Biscayne Bay and took the extra five minutes to relay the message, Miami would be very different.”

Quenee says that social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, has been helpful in building a following for cleanup events.

“We try to put out pieces that are educational, informational or inspirational in a way to get people out and active,” he says of the nonprofit’s social media posts.

Photographs on their Instagram page show volunteers hauling large pieces of debris stuck in mangrove roots, containers full of discarded colorful bottle caps, and scenes from their cleanups.

Quenee also recently launched a “Create to Educate” series on the nonprofit’s Instagram page, where a creative person who is impacting the environment in a positive way is featured, such as a surfer who creates surfboards using recycled materials.

“In a matter of changing a whole community like Miami, there are so many different people that need to get involved to effectively create a change over this massive city,” he says.

Some eye-opening things volunteers have found during cleanups are a Bacardi bottle from

1963, a message in a bottle and cruise ship ropes that weighed 900 pounds.

“That’s all nylon, which is plastic,” says Quenee of the ropes. “Over time, if that broke apart, that would be 900 pounds of micro-plastics.”

The Sendit4thesea crew consists of about seven core members. Most are former students from MAST Academy and are in their early twenties.