Now that Tampa's pirates have gone away, it's time to pick up all the debris from this yearly "invasion."
Following the Gasparilla festivities, there tends to be pounds worth of trash and leftover colorful beads scattered across the city. And it's got to be picked up somehow. The cleanup started after Saturday's festivities, but there's still more to be done.
On "Florida Matters Live & Local," we learned about how you can help in the efforts, met a cleanup crew whose goal expands beyond Hyde Park and more.
Here's what to know.
How to give away your leftover parade beads
Tampa has several bead collection sites open, but The Florida Aquarium will also collect your beads through Feb. 22 — with a perk as well.
If you bring your beads, you can get 50% off up to four general admission tickets. The discount cannot be combined with other discounts. For any more information, make sure to go to the aquarium's website.
Below is a list of the other collection sites available during their open hours.
- Copeland Park Community Center at 11001 N 15th St.
- Kate Jackson Community Center at 821 S Rome Ave.
- Loretta Ingraham Recreation Complex at 1611 N Hubert Ave.
- MacDonald Training Center (weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) at 5420 W Cypress St.
Why are these beads harmful to the environment?
Debborah "Debi" Luke, the aquarium's senior vice president of conservation, told "Florida Matters Live & Local" that the beads are made out of plastic. And wherever they're thrown, they'll somehow make their way to the water.
"They get washed down the drains and so forth and make it out into our bay. And of course, plastics in the water are never good. Fish and other animals ingest them," Luke said.
ALSO READ: Scenes from a very chilly 2026 Gasparilla invasion and parade
It then breaks down into microplastics over time, which never decompose.
"We now know that microplastics are found within all these species in the water, but also in humans. So it's not great," Luke said. "We need to make sure if we're having fun during Gasparilla season or to your point, other times, that we're also cleaning up after ourselves that we can live in a healthier environment.
Meet the crew starting 'Gasparilla Clean Fest'
A workout on Davis Island Beach is the origin story for the Gasparilla Clean Team.
The founders are Wesley Roderick and Nate Hammond. Roderick owns SuperNatural Food & Wine, while Hammond operates the mobile sauna company Elevated Embers.
Hammond told host Matthew Peddie that they were doing a workout with some buddies on Davis Island Beach, and it was "just wrecked."
"That's really a nicer way to put it. There's just trash everywhere," Hammond said. "And you just look around at the city we live in, and we're so blessed to live in a beautiful place, and we just realized it was kind of our responsibility to take it on."
So, they gathered a group together and made this clean-up time fun.
"Just kind of took what kind of our expertise is — food, coffee, fun — and just tried to make it a whole experience to get some people down and clean the beach. And it's just kind of spread from there," Hammond said.
Roderick would provide the food after the clean-up, and Hammond would provide sauna cold plunges. They even had a friend running a coffee cart for some time there as well.
When asked what kind of trash and debris they're finding, Hammond said, "There's so much. There's so much that pops out."
"The stuff we found in the depths of the neighborhood has been most interesting. Even just the forgotten parts off Bayshore," Hammond said.
They explained how they had a group of 24 people at Tampa Heights, cleaned for 45 minutes and pulled 645 pounds of trash out of that neighborhood.
"It's a workout. Trust me, it is definitely a workout," Roderick said. "And that's an example. So we've had three separate events, and I think in totality, it's probably been close to 1,500 pounds in what is effectively less than three hours of active time. And that's Davis Island, Tampa Heights and Seminole Heights as well."
Now they're looking to expand — creating the first "Gasparilla Clean Fest" for March 1.
"And our goal with that is just to become an annual after-Gasparilla, the last event is a community-wide cleanup," Roderick said. "So not specific to Gasparilla right on Bayshore, cleaning up beads necessarily, but taking the community and the Tampa Bay area on as a whole."
They explained that March was the date because they're looking to tackle the city as a whole and looked at the Gasparilla calendar.
"So it's the weekend after the Gasparilla Classic. So our hope is just to kind of become an annual part of essentially Gasparilla, and we're just the cleanup crew," Hammond said.
The team is meeting at Willa's Provisions at 8 a.m. on March 1 for this event. You can go to Elevated Embers' Instagram or the Gasparilla Clean Team's Instagram to sign up.
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full episode here.
