Ocean waves Outer Cabrillo beach

It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Los Angeles this past Friday; the perfect kind of day to just sit on the beach and enjoy some ocean gazing. As I was watching the waves roll in and enjoying the beautiful sunny skies…something caught my eye.

Rolling in the surf was a large, orange thing. At first I thought…maybe it’s some really cool ocean critter. But I have to admit, I knew this thought was very unrealistic based on the size and shape of said thing and I moved on to my next guess. It’s probably an orange plastic bag.

But it was moving all over the place and I couldn’t really get a good look at it. Then I tried to get close enough to grab it, but this object seemed to have a mind of its own and was always just out of reach. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in wading clothes and there wasn’t a good stick or fishing instrument around to snag it.

The orange sweater displayed on a rock

After several failed attempts to reach the mysterious object, I become frustrated and thought: Ocean if you cough it up, I’ll pick it up. Then I watched for awhile and the orange blob completely vanished. Realizing that the sea wasn’t letting go, I moved on and became occupied taking beach photos, scoping out cool rocks and enjoying the day.

As I was about to head out, I turned around to take one last look and there was the orange thing lying in the sun on the beach. It turned out to be a sweater!

The sweater was a woman’s size M and seemed in pretty good condition until I took a closer look and discovered several small round little holes in it, probably made by a hungry ocean critter.

I couldn’t help wondering about the origins of this sweater. Did someone lose it to high tide at the beach? Did the sweater wash off a boat? Did someone strip naked and throw all their clothes in the ocean? I guess we’ll never know. But the next time you head to the water whether it’s by beach or boat, please stow clothes in a safe place to prevent them from becoming one more piece of ocean trash.