By Oahu Volunteer Coordinator and Advisory Board Member Temple Liebmann

Yesterday was one for the books!

Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA) teamed up with our partners Island Divers for an incredible cleanup dive out at Spitting Caves and let me tell you—it was an absolute blast.

We had an all-star crew on the vessel Sea Fox, with Captain Matt Negard at the helm, Temple Liebmann (that’s me!) on crew and above-water photography, and Gary Liebmann leading our dive team.

Our divers— Henry Bennett, Chandler Bosch, Michael Del Pra, Crystal Grey (our underwater photographer), Amy Heinemans, Cecile Kaiser, Jerritt Larson, Andrew Leighton, David Marcelli, Dan Okamura, Justin Silva, and Bailey Young—were fired up and ready to go.

The ride out was straight out of a dream. We had dolphins playing in our wake, putting on a show like they knew we were watching. Then, just as the divers were working their magic underwater, a pod of whales decided to make an appearance. Talk about a perfect day on (and under) the water! They're so fast, it was hard to get a shot but here's one of the dolphins following us:

The conditions couldn’t have been better. The crew had great visibility to remove the abandoned recreational fishing gear.

Be sure to check out the photo gallery below -- Crystal got sooo many good crystal-clear shots!

Everyone was very busy dis-entangling fishing line, being as careful as possible not to hurt the coral.

Our team works well together collecting the filled-up buckets and sending them to the surface with float bags.

In just 38 minutes, the team pulled up 160 pounds of lead and over 1,000 yards’ worth of tangled fishing line, a mind-blowing amount of debris for such a short dive. It’s insane to think about how long that junk has been sitting down there, wreaking havoc on marine life. But not anymore!

Afterwards, we did what any hard-working, ocean-loving crew would do—we headed to Kona Brewing Company for some much-needed food, drinks, and camaraderie. Nothing like a cold one to celebrate a job well done with an amazing group of people!

Huge shoutout to everyone who made this cleanup possible. Can’t wait to do it again, soon!

If you live in Oahu and want to help clean the oceans please shoot us an email!