By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
Sunday, July 13th, started out like many days for ODA volunteers. Seven of us were scheduled to meet up at the boat in Chanel Islands Harbor around 8:30am and head out for another trip to Anacapa Island. As soon as I got up and turned my phone on, I found out one person had to cancel. Now we were down to 6…
When I got to the marina it was overcast and there was dew on everything, it almost felt like it was going to rain. This being southern California, that was NOT going to happen.
The divers started loading all their gear onto the dive racks, while we all wondered: where is that 6th volunteer? He never showed up. So, now we were down to 5, and I was contemplating canceling the outing. With 3 divers, that left just me and Dave Merrill to handle our boat Mr. Barker’s LegaSea and the RIB (rigid inflatable boat). I asked Dave what he thought, and he wanted to go out anyway. Okay! Let’s do it!
We ended up leaving the harbor at 9:30am, and we were making our way out to the open ocean we could clearly see Anacapa. The clouds were ominous and formed a gray ceiling at about 800 feet. The one thing the cloud cover did was flatten the seas because there was hardly any wind to kick up any waves.
Here's a view of where were were heading from the harbor:
The waves were predicted to be 2-3 feet, but they were more like 6 inches. Ideal boating conditions and for spotting any marine wildlife. As we got within about a mile of the island the water was completely flat. Wow, great way to start the dives!
Our goal was to look for abandoned lobster traps near the east end of Anacapa. We dropped the anchor about 200 feet north of the site where we removed 9 traps in early June.
Kim Cardenas, Geoff Walsh, and Mike Wynd wasted no time getting into their gear while discussing the dive plan.
Mike dropped down first, headed down the anchor line and attached one end of a line to it and took the other end with him; this way, he could find his way back in case the visibility was so bad he couldn’t see.
Mike also had his camera with him, and it turned out to be very useful.
Kim and Geoff jumped in the water about 15 minutes later, dropped down the anchor line and headed in a slightly different direction in order to maximize the search area.
After about 30 minutes, Dave and I were getting anxious because we weren’t seeing any lift bags at the surface. These bags are attached to debris and then inflated to pull the debris to the surface. Just as we were thinking about this, 2 bags popped up, about 150 feet from us. Dave got in the RIB and motored over to them and hooked a line to the trap and towed it over to the LegaSea.
Just as he was hooking that up, 2 more bags appeared at the surface, this time just 30 feet from the boat. Not long after that I could see another bag about 100 feet behind us, and then another 200 feet away.
This is what I feared, just Dave and I handling both boats while trying to wrestle the traps onto the LegaSea. Ideally, we’d have at least 2 people in the RIB and 2 on the big boat.
Knowing we were going to be overwhelmed, rather than haul the traps aboard, when Dave got close enough to me he handed me a line that was attached to the trap. I then just tied it off on a cleat and let it hang in the water on the side of the boat.
We’d wait for the divers to finish their dive and get them to help us attach the hook to our crane (also called davit) and let it do the work hoisting the debris up. While this worked out fine, it was very laborious and time consuming.
Once we got everything onto the front deck, we had 3 traps and about 80 pounds of trap remnants scattered on the deck. We released 2 lobsters and 4 sheep crabs!
As we were catching our breath and talking about the second dive Mike said that he’d seen another trap about 75 feet behind the boat and there were several animals in it. There was also a huge amount of trap line stuffed into it. So much so that he couldn’t really tell how many animals were in there.
Because we were running late, it was almost 2 o’clock, Mike offered to go put lift bags on that one trap and come back. We had a bit to eat and drink and hear about what everyone had seen.
The divers told us the underwater visibility was outstanding at roughly 60 feet. This is almost unheard of for California. Everyone had seen some giant sea bass (GSB). Which is always a thrill because their numbers have been so severely reduced due to them being overfished in the past. Now that there’s a ban on catching them, they’re slowly making a comeback.
GSB can live to be 75 years old, reach 7 feet long and over 600 pounds if allowed to live that long. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but this animal was about 5 feet long. Long may ye roam!
Before sending that last trap up, Mike got some excellent images of what it looked like when he first came upon it. As you can see, in addition to the sheep crabs that were stuck in it, there were others on the outside milling about. Were they trying to get their friends out of there?
Here's the jailbreak photo!
And here's the amazing footage!
I'm glad you'll get to share in the joy of seeing all the incredible wildlife.
As that trap was sent to the surface by Mike, Dave and Geoff were already in position to attach a line to it and tow it over to Kim and me.
Because this trap weighed so much and the current was really kicking up, it took over 20 minutes to get the trap in a position for us to lift it with the davit onto the deck.
Once it was onto the deck I was astonished at how much trap line was in there and 2 huge sheep crabs were so entangled in it, they appeared to be hog tied. I don’t know how they were still alive.
But they were, and their front claws let us know that they were in no mood to let us extract them without a fight. By this time all 5 of us were on the front deck trying to free these guys.
There were 3 sheep crabs in this trap, 2 of whom were the largest I’ve ever seen. Too big for us to get them out of the trap without cutting some holes in it. Kim grabbed the bolt cutters and proceeded to cut some of the metal grating of the trap away. Geoff had a knife that he used to delicately cut the line off them.
Eventually we got all of them out of there and they were on their way to live out their lives. We also released 4 more lobsters, one of which was laden with eggs. Go girl, go!
Now we were really behind schedule and after posing for some pictures with our “Catch of the Day” we made a bee line for the harbor.
The seas were still flat and even though the clouds had lifted, we could see for miles. About halfway to the harbor I started seeing some whale spouts about a mile ahead of us. I headed in that direction and oh my what a sight: a feeding frenzy. Hundreds and hundreds of dolphins were chasing fish. Pelicans, cormorants, and a variety of sea gulls flying all over the place to gobble up what the dolphins missed. Then, more whale spouts.
By this time, it was about 5 o’clock, but this was just such a rare treat for us that we spent 30 minutes slowly motoring around and taking in the spectacle.
I can’t put into words how grounding it is to hear all the sounds that we witnessed. Dolphins grabbing a breath of air, making their high-pitched squeals as they communicate with each other, cormorants’ wings flapping on the water as they try to reach the bounty, screeching sea gulls, pelicans splashing beak first into the water. Then the exhalation of the whales with their vocalizations filling our ears.
These were humpback whales. I think there were 3 of them but I can’t be sure. As we were leaving one of them gave us the ultimate compliment by raising its pectoral fin high into the air as if to give us a high five for what we’d done.
By the time we offloaded the traps, took the group shot, and cleaned up the boat it was almost 7pm. This was an 11-hour day for me. More like 15 hours for Dave and Mike when accounting for their commute…
This was a day that will live in my memory for a lifetime. Five wonderful people, 4 traps out of harm’s way, 10 liberated animals, and one of the biggest high fives I’ve ever witnessed!
ODA ocean cleanup crew with their "Catch of the Day"!
Thanks Kim, Dave, Geoff and Mike for putting so much time and effort into this impactful day. And to our donors who make this happen. We truly feel you with us – thank you for being there and caring!
If you want to be part of this -- we'd love to have your involvement, either by you volunteering or contributing financially!
