Be sure to check out the photo gallery below with almost 60 photos of this fantastic effort!
By Volunteer Marjorie Zensen
A text to me from ODA Hawai’i Island Chapter Leader Sarah Milisen informed me that we would have 100 volunteers at the April 6th cleanup the following day instead of the 50 or so that we thought! Wow!
Then from Sarah “What do we do with 100 people and one dumpster?!”
Honokohau Harbor was the cleanup site. It would be our 11th cleanup there.
Immediately she got to work and secured a second dumpster from Pacific Waste (who donated the dumpsters – thanks so much) which was quickly delivered!
Sarah started thinking about how best to use our volunteers while I pushed to find more food for our lunch. While the Kona Sailing Club had planned to provide and cook burgers for our volunteers, they were not prepared for this increase in last-minute volunteers! I was so happy when Costco quickly agreed to donate 10 pizzas to add to our lunch. By days end, my last text to Sarah was, “TEN pizzas. Noon pick up. Forms for Costco filled out and sent. Bam.”
Her reply, “And dumpster! And blocked off parking, and DOBOR approval. And 100 lovely volunteers. The world is looking better!”
Leadership and some early birds met at 8 AM at Honokohau Harbor to get set up for the morning.
Here's what our eager cleanup crew looked like at the begining of the day:
By 9:30 our fearless leader, Sarah, was briefing our volunteers.
Right after that divers were organized into groups of 5 or 6, led by a team leader. Each team gathered shore support and were sent to a designated area in the harbor.
Safely the divers did a 5-foot giant stride into the water.
It was not long, minutes really, before divers were asking for ropes to tie-off tires so that shore support could lift them to the surface and pull them out.
Carpet was a contender for the most pulled-out item, and they are NOT fun to haul onto the dock! It is very difficult for the diver and very difficult for shore support to drag it out. (Remember the 5 foot drop I just mentioned?).
Then came a marine battery, a marine radio, hoses, hoses, and more hoses, bottles, masks and snorkels, sunglasses, plastics of all kinds, metal scraps, tubing, cans of all kinds, a bottle of wine (yes, it was sealed, and wine was still in it!), fishing line, a fishing pole and even a can of paint with paint still in it!!! On and on. You get the idea! About 4000 pounds of debris!
Oh, and tires! 46 of them. Some of them were massive tires (I was told even airplane tires!); others were car and truck tires. We estimate around 2500 pounds of tires. The photos tell the story much better than I can!
Let me just make a quick mention of our volunteers because I was so amazed with them! Our volunteers ages spanned from older, retired folks to young “Critter Catchers” (kids whose job it was to look for live critters in the mud-filled tires that are brought up and place the little animals back in the water to continue their lives)!
We even had high schoolers earning volunteer hours! (Personally, I was SO impressed with how hard the high schoolers worked).
Many of our volunteers had never volunteered with us in a clean-up of this magnitude but every single person saw what needed to be done, jumped in, and did it.
Here we are, happy as can be with our "Catch of the Day":
We had several people photographing including Bo Pardau and Mikena Shay from Body Glove. Thanks so much for documenting all the action!
And a huge thank you to Jack’s Diving Locker and Kona Honu Divers for providing tanks to our divers!
While eating a late lunch after everything was cleaned up, Sarah, sitting across from me, sent me her final text of the day. She asked me not to forget to mention:
“Costco, thank you (pizzas)
Blue Ocean Mariculture
Kona Sailing Club (lunch and 20 volunteers)”
So, here I go:
- Costco: Your pizzas were delicious and much appreciated!
- Blue Ocean Mariculture: We’re thankful to do good work with you and your volunteers!
- Kona Sailing Clube: Thank you very much for the yummy grilled sandwiches and for having 20 of your volunteers join us! Amazing!
See what happens when a LOT of people come together? We can make a huge difference. But remember that even ONE person can make a difference. Earth Day is fast approaching! ODA Hawai’i has big plans so keep an eye out for future articles about our Earth Day missions. Are you thinking about how you will honor our Green and Blue?
Be sure to let us know if you want to be included in the next satisfying ocean or harbor cleanup! volunteer@oceandefenders.org
