Clean-Up Tons of Debris from the Ocean & Beaches

Ahoy, friend and wonderful supporter! We hope this update finds you doing well during this unique time.

While most of the news we read every day goes from bad to worse (to downright depressing) at times, there IS some good news out there as well – and we’re here to offer you more of it!  

To begin with, as most countries shut down non-essential travel and public gatherings, global wildlife gets to breathe a sigh of relief as people stay at home to keep themselves and others healthy.

These are trying times for everyone, and it’s no different for ODA volunteers. We’re always itching to remove more marine debris, but we have many successes to share with you from the last few months!

So here is the good news we’ve collected for you…

• In July, we head out just outside Los Angeles Harbor with a skeleton crew of 2 divers and a deckhand.  ODA’s small team removed 40 pounds of deadly debris.  After much consideration and planning, this outing gave us the confidence to resume our cleanup operations, just adjusted for safety with fewer people onboard

• Early August: Our Founder and Captain, Kurt Lieber, had the opportunity to address the commissioners on the California Fish and Game Commission (CF&G).  He shared video and discussed marine debris and whale entanglements knowledge gained over the past 20 years (link below). Our video and presentation were very well received at the CF&G meeting. This is a HUGE step in the right direction and reinforces the value that our science and documentation bring to the table. View some of the images he shared here.

• An additional outing in August included a massive beach cleanup at Waiahole Beach, in Hawaii. Waiahole Beach Park was relieved of 3,000 pounds of debris thanks to ODA-HI and Nudi Wear.  

• We never forget the plastic plague. So, when an ODA volunteer and board member mentioned debris along a bike path along and over the Santa Clara River, we jumped into action. Several volunteers worked for two hours removing about 70 pounds of plastics. This debris was mostly single use items: food wrappers, straws, cups and lids, water bottles and caps, and of course, hundreds of cigarette butts (ew, right?)…. You can read more about that great day here.

• On Sunday, August 16^th, a small ODA crew of five of us decided to take our vessel Mr. Barker’s LegaSea out to the Los Angeles Harbor breakwall. It’s a real challenge doing all this work with such a small crew. But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re doing our best to keep the number of people onboard to a minimum. We successfully removed one trap, 200 feet of trap line, 100’s of feet of fishing lines, and half a dozen pieces of trap remnants. The trash container was filled up with debris, and we covered about 300 more yards of our Seven-Mile Wall Crawl. Oy, this is going to take a while…  

• In the battle to put an end to the injury and death of marine animals – especially whales – ODA is building a dataset of information to show when and where high concentrations of traps are set each year. Our teams have made several outings to collect more data in the defense of marine critters. Our project is called Trap Trackers. You can learn more about our program in this article.

ODA is committed to cleaning our oceans through small-crew (COVID-safe) boat outings; beach, harbor, and channel cleanups; scientific studies; and educational outreach!

There’s much work to be done to achieve a debris-free sea and we appreciate you partnering with us to ensure it happens. Thank YOU!

To be continued…

Links:

• ODA on Facebook
• Sign-up for ODA E-News
• Ocean Defenders Alliance website homepage