By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
The blazing heat of summer couldn’t get in the way of ODA’s goal of removing deadly debris from the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge (SBNWR )!
We do this once a month, and this was our 6th outing of the year. We missed only one possible opportunity this year. That was back in January when we had to cancel due to rain. Rain? Yeah, it’s been awhile.
I had thought about canceling this monthly cleanup effort the day before the planned event. In fact, I sent out an email to our volunteers a couple of days before, letting them know that I was canceling, due to only one other person signing up. With me in the mix that would have made a grand total of two…
But as soon as I sent that email out, three more people said they could make it. With the additional hands it made sense to do the cleanup, so I packed up all the gear into my car and headed south.
I always arrive the day before and go into the Refuge to scout around the edges of the 960-acre wetlands, looking for specific areas that have a high density of debris caught up in the grasses.
When I got there, it was 89 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. As I drove around, hardly anything was moving in the heat. I only saw 3 species of birds doing their best to take advantage of the situation.
The tide was really high and all the areas I evaluated were covered in 2-3 feet of water. But I could see that those waters delivered a fresh load of debris, which was plastic.
The few birds I did see were all on the hunt. Great blue herons. A red-tailed hawk had something in his mouth he was eating, while perched 40 feet up in a tree.
There were also dozens of great egrets scattered all over the wetlands.
I stopped my car at one spot and watched one that seemed frozen in position.
After several minutes he/she slowly stretched its neck out and without moving a foot nabbed a small fish. Stealth in action!
By this time, I had found 3 locations where I felt we could remove hundreds of pounds of stuff.
Wednesday, July 22nd, 5 of us got to work at 9am.
Luckily, it wasn’t near as hot as the night before and we all grabbed out pickers, gloves, and buckets, and waded into the edges of the marsh.
The dedicated crew was Dennis Arp, Kent Morris, Fred Reed, and Blake Storie.
At the first site, it took us about an hour to remove 150 pounds of debris, and the area looked way better than we had found it. So, we headed to the second site and got to work.
Here's our "before" picture of one area:
This area was heavily infected with debris, and we spent the next 2 hours with our heads down, doing all 5 people could do to free the water and grasses of the plastic that can harm the birds and fish in so many ways.
Here's our "after" photo -- looks pretty good, huh?
Come 11 o’clock the sun was in full blast mode, and the heat was draining us. We called it quits around 11:45, took a few pictures and then melted back into our air-conditioned cars and headed home.
In all, I estimate that we removed 400 pounds of all manner of plastics. Water bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, straws, coffee stirrers, syringes, a few backpacks, and a pallet that was made of plastic. That alone had to weigh 30 pounds!
Ocean Defenders Crew with their "Catch of the Day"
Thanks to Dennis, Kent, Fred, and Blake that stuff will not be heading out to the ocean and getting stuck in some unfortunate ocean critter’s stomach!
