Saturday Fun for Everyone: Right Whale Festival in Jax Beach

The First Coast Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation is organizing a beach cleanup this weekend.  They are meeting at 16th Avenue South in Jax Beach beginning at 9:00am.   According to their Facebook Page, the beach is sorely in need of some helping hands to clean up debris from recents storms and such.  They’ll provide bags and gloves!  You: bring your board. If the surf’s good, everyone will have some fun, afterwards.

Beach cleanup is just a great thing to do for our coastline.  We love our beaches and someone’s got to keep them clean. We think that someone is us. 

The third annual Right Whale Festival will be held from 10:00am – 4:00pm at the Seawalk Pavilion in Jax Beach. Another beach clean-up at this location will kick off the day’s festivities; volunteers can also go to the lifeguard station at 2 Oceanfront North where they’ll be providing gloves, bags, and even tee shirts (while supplies last).  Adults must accompany kids under 18, and community service hours are offered for helping out.

The Right Whale Festival is sponsored by several worthy organizations which you will see when you visit the festival website,  which we really encourage because you’ll see all the cool things that are planned for the day.  We can’t wait to go; this will be our first time there and we are definitely bringing along the kids and their friends.

This is the tentative schedule of events according to their website but there is much more than listed here, so do visit the festival website.

This is the season when the Right whales travel south down the Atlantic coastline to their calving grounds, which happens to be offshore from us!  They like to give birth in our warmer coastal waters, and will remain here for several months tending to their young,  before returning north to their feeding grounds next spring.  If you’re on the beach often during the winter months, you might want to carry a small pair of binoculars in case you spot one of these protected beauties. It is reported that there may be only about 350 Right whales in existence. We have yet to see one in all the years we’ve lived at the beach (although we’ve witnessed several sea turtle nest hatchings!).  Maybe this will be our lucky year!

The Sea to Shore Alliance and more locally, the Keepers of the Coast, are very involved in programs and activities that inform and inspire people to understand and care about the precious marine life that we are so fortunate to be able to observe, and help protect, too.  Living at the beach is truly an opportunity to have some unique experiences with sea life.

It sounds like Saturday the 19th is going to be a great day all the way around.

See you there?