You know what I am thinking... we can turn this into a great event that would draw positive attention to the hobby and the club.
Turn this into a clean the bay/shoreline/wetland, what have you, event.
Organize the event with the club members, families, friends, etc. Choose a stretch of coast line that is not manicured by the city that has both sandy style beach and rocky out crops.
We can have a great even that cleans a section of coast, and gives us an opportunity to gather some clean up crews. We can also swing it into an education session about how the garbage contributes to the pollution, red tides, and how the clean the animals we are collecting help not only the coast we collect them from but how they help to maintain out tanks.
There is a chance that a coast clean up, combined with a collection event might be twisted, but with the education session we should be able to divert that kind of attention. We can also keep the collection more quite and focus on the clean up...
Just a thought. I would be more members would show up for a clean up than a collection. It would be a great way to get our families together.