OLD ORCHARD BEACH (AP) – Weaving among thousands of sunbathers who thronged the beach Tuesday, 125 volunteer trash collectors picked up more than 60 pounds of garbage, including an extra-large leather jacket and a garbage can’s worth of cigarette butts.

They were participating in the first of 16 stops on the Wyland Ocean Challenge, whose organizers hope to have a million volunteers cleaning beaches this month from Maine to the Florida Keys.

In the process, they plan to deliver a message about the importance of clean water and promote protection of the nation’s marine habitats.

“I’ve seen the beauty in nature and I want to protect it,” said Wyland, 48, an artist who has traveled the world painting murals of whales and other ocean animals.

Wyland, whose given name is Robert, said he has spent more than $100,000 of his own money on the project. Although he can afford it, he said the cost is unimportant. “You can’t put a price on the environment.”

People around the world need to work together to keep their oceans clean, he said.

“We need a sea change, and the way that’s going to be accomplished is by thinking big and getting people involved,” he said. “We need to think about protecting water on a global scale.”

The cleanup is an offshoot of a science and art curriculum Wyland is developing with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. The program is designed to teach children about water cycles and the importance of clean water.

When the program is completed, Wyland hopes to present the curriculum to the United Nations so that it can be used by schools around the world.

“I’m trying to think real big, because not too many people do any more,” he said. “I want to educate and inspire a whole generation of ocean lovers and conservation-minded students.”

Although that goal, and his plan to expand the coastal cleanup to nearly 200 countries in the next four years, may strike some as overambitious, Wyland is confident he’ll succeed.

“I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do,” he said, including painting 91 of a planned 100 life-size murals on the walls of buildings around the world. Wyland painted his most recent mural on a wall in Guam; he hopes to paint his last one on the Great Wall of China in 2008.

Wyland began painting whales in the 1970s after seeing a gray whale during his first visit to the ocean at age 14. He paints and sculpts whales, dolphins and fish in idyllic underwater settings.

“As environmentalism grew in the 70s, so did appreciation of my art, and more importantly, the message of my art,” he said.

That message, he said, is that keeping the world’s waters clean and healthy will be one of the most important environmental challenges of the next century.

“All the countries in the world are connected by water,” he said. “We need to be good citizens of the blue planet.”

As less-developed countries move into the industrial age, it has become essential to educate children around the world about the need to be good stewards of the oceans.

“If we don’t do something there’s going to be wars about clean water,” he said. “We want people to educate themselves, share their knowledge, and take action.”

At Old Orchard Beach, volunteer trash collector Sheila Letarte had absorbed Wyland’s message. She has spent the past 25 summers in Old Orchard, and said the beach is cleaner than it used to be.

“We have to keep the beach, the sand and the water safe, not only for birds and fish but for future generations to enjoy,” she said.

AP-ES-08-03-04 1749EDT