By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

After one of our successful trips to Anacapa Island last month, I went back to the place where we leave the traps that we removed. It’s known as the fish loading dock, and it’s in Channel Islands Harbor. I report each trap that has an ID tag on it to the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They then contact the trap owners and tell them they can pick up the traps at this location.

I hadn’t gotten all the trap tag numbers, so I returned the next day to take some pictures. I stacked them in a pyramid shape, hung our banner on them and took a few pictures of my “artwork.”

As I was doing all this a guy pulled up in his truck and asked what I was doing. When I told him, he said he had heard of ODA and seen our boat around the island several times in the past.

When I described how we put divers in the water, near areas where we think there will be abandoned traps, he had some suggestions on where we might have a better chance of finding them because he loses a lot of them every year and has the GPS locations of where he last saw them.

With that information, on Sunday, July 5^th, we headed out to a spot we hadn’t scouted before. It was in an area between East Anacapa and Middle Anacapa. It’s a really shallow area and even though it looks like a boat could navigate through the tight squeeze, you do it at your own risk.

We had a good group of people onboard as we headed out. The crew consisted of: Kevin Augarten, Matt Hoove, Dave Merrill, Bart Steger, Geoff Walsh, and Mike Wynd.

During the transit we came across a big flock of cormorants, they looked like they were on the hunt for some sardines or mackerels. Watch out for those beaks!

We dropped the anchor in 30 feet of water and soon Kevin, Bart, Geoff, and Mike were in the water and doing their search.

Dave and Matt offloaded the RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) from the front deck into the water and were ready for action in case any traps popped to the surface.

It took a long while, but eventually we saw 2 sets of bags the guys had attached to two traps and Dave and Matt were off and running in the RIB.

When we finally got the traps and the divers safely onboard, it was 2 o’clock. Whoa, how did it get that late for just one dive!

The dive team revealed that the underwater visibility was really bad, and they couldn’t see more than 8 feet, so we decided to call it a day and head home. We secured the traps on the front deck, got all the critters out of the traps, which were mostly a type of snail called a limpet, and pulled anchor. We stopped for a few minutes to get a pic of the crew with our “Catch of the Day”!

By the time we got back to our slip, unloaded all the dive gear and traps, and washed the boat down, it was 4 o’clock when we finally headed home.

Even though we only removed 2 traps, we still feel there are a lot more there and we’ll give it another go, when conditions permit.

Thanks again to our dedicated team of Ocean Defenders – Kevin, Matt, Dave, Bart, Geoff and Mike.

You can help us from right where you are! By making a donation you’ll help keep ODA crews at sea, doing what we do best – protecting marine wildlife and their habitats.