Jacob Tauber joined his friends Sunday morning to help clean up Bayshore Boulevard.

“There’s bags of stuff we were picking up,” the 15-year-old said. “I feel we did a good job.”

Tauber and his friends joined about 200 other volunteers as they picked up beads, cups and cans left behind after Saturday’s Gasparilla.

The Florida Aquarium, Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful and the City of Tampa joined forces to clear anything left behind from this weekend's festivities. Street sweepers picked up most of the trash Saturday evening, and volunteers gathered what couldn’t be swept up by machines.

Tom Damico with Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful said it’s important to clean up the trash before it gets into the Bay.

“There are chemicals that can leak out and dissolve in the water, affecting the water quality,” Damico said.

Plus, it’s harder to collect the trash once it hits the water. Many of the heavier beads can sink, and trash can float out of reach. It can pose a serious threat to the sea life, especially the beads.

“They aren’t biodegradable and they can really get entangled in a lot of sea creatures,” said Katherine Claytor with the Florida Aquarium. “They’ll eat them and birds will eat them, so it’s very critical that we pick up everything.”

Last year, volunteers picked up more than a ton of trash along the parade route. Damico wouldn’t be surprised to put up the same numbers this year.

“We would like to see that the numbers might be down, that there isn’t as much trash and debris to pick up,” Damico said. “But if we do see the numbers are the same, we’ll be happy to know that the efforts of our volunteers were well worth the costs.”

The party isn’t over, however. The next parade will be on February 13 when Krewe of the Knights of Sant’ Yago invade Ybor City.