By Celeste Silling
On March 10, we helped host NestFest, one of my favorite volunteer events of the year. NestFest is a large-scale beach cleanup that focuses on removing dangerous litter from important sea turtle and shorebird nesting habitat along the upper Texas Coast.
Sea turtles and birds can easily get entangled in trash when they come onto Texas beaches to nest. Fishing line in particular is a huge entanglement threat. Sea turtles get the line tangled on their flippers, heads and all around their bodies. Birds frequently get it wrapped around their feet, legs, wings, and beaks while they walk or swim. The tightening line can limit the mobility and hunting ability of these animals, and can often cut off circulation and cause death. If you ever see a one-legged bird on the beach, this is likely the cause.
Some animals consume trash as well. They can mistake it for food, or accidently eat small pieces of trash while they’re eating their normal diets. Sea turtles are prone to this, as they mistake plastic bags and other trash for yummy jellyfish. Birds can easily eat microplastics as they’re hunting for fish or other marine prey.
NestFest began in 2023, when five partners decided to team up to prepare our beaches for nesting season. SPLASh (Stopping Plastics and Litter Along Shorelines), Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, American Bird Conservancy, Gulf Center for Sea Turtle Research, and the Galveston Texas Master Naturalists came together to host cleanups across several beaches where turtles and birds like to nest.
This year, we hosted NestFest on fourteen different beaches across Bolivar, Galveston, Follets, and Quintana islands! Cleaning up fourteen different beaches in one day is no small task, but we had the help of 500 amazing volunteers to do so. We here at Gulf Coast Bird Observatory are in charge of overseeing the five cleanups on Follets and Quintana, and I can attest that everyone was giving it their all! Our staff and volunteers definitely put in the work to get these beaches clean for the birds and turtles.
In total, across all fourteen NestFest sites, we removed over 5,200 lbs of trash in one day with the help of over 500 volunteers. The site with the most trash was Ferry Beach on Bolivar, which is next to the ferry landing and has a lot of trash washing up from the gulf. Other standouts were the Jocelyn Nungaray wildlife refuge, with 832 lbs and Follets Beach Access #5, with 658 lbs.
We are so grateful to the people who came out to help our local wildlife and ecosystems. Those 5,200lbs of trash are now out of the way and our turtles and birds will be safer for it. If you are interested in learning more or signing up for NestFest next year, visit SPLAShtx.org and look for the NestFest page. We’ll be doing it for years to come, so look out for NestFest next March!
Photo Credit: Gulf Center for Sea Turtle Research
Caption: Volunteers removing litter from the beach at NestFest 2026
Photo Credit: SPLASh
Caption: Some of the trash removed from Ferry Beach
