By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
I have so much to share with you because we were joined on this cleanup by of ocean conservation advocate Jess Clifton and a team from Metro Public Relations. We were introduced by our mutual friends at Humble Brands.
Because our plans for an Earth Day cleanup at a site we’re calling “Bolsa Chica Channel” were thwarted by rains, we had to cancel that cleanup.
But we rescheduled and headed back to the site on Saturday, May 31st.
This channel passes through Los Angeles and Orange Counties funneling water from the land and sending it on its way to the ocean.
ODA adopted this channel because it’s a major conduit for all the plastics, pesticides, and a myriad of other toxins and trash that humans discard into the environment. Most of this polluting is through sheer negligence, but some of it is purposely discarded. Things like syringes don’t end up in the Channel by accident—they’re often tossed carelessly or on the sly. And items like paint cans, oil cans, and mattresses don’t just jump out of a truck…
Thinking of all this trash heading out to the ocean reminds me that there’s been a lot written lately about how whales are being found dead, with their guts packed with plastics. We know it’s been happening to birds because they mistake some plastic items for food.
But why whales and dolphins?
Several studies have been published recently that looked at how dolphins and whale hunt for their food. Because they hunt in the depths and can’t actually see their food, they use echolocation to figure out if the item in front of them is something like a squid, fish or jellyfish or something solid like a piece of wood. When the scientists bounced the same acoustic signal off several different forms of plastic, the signal came back almost identical to that from their natural food sources!
Oh boy, this does not bode well for these mammals. Turns out a plastic bag looks just the same to them as a jellyfish. Squid are the main prey for one of the most fascinating animals on this planet, the Sperm whale. Several of them have been washing up dead on beaches throughout the world.
When scientists do a necropsy on them, they are finding an insane amount of plastic bags in their stomachs, which then block their digestive tracts. They can’t feed, and they can’t pass the debris out of their system. The only thing left on their menu is a slow death by starvation…
What can be done?
Until humans stop being so cavalier about using and discarding plastics, we need to do all we can to prevent that stuff from reaching the oceans.
But never fear…ODA volunteers are on the job. On this glorious day, 16 people joyfully teamed up to get all kinds of plastic items out of the BCC. We met at 9 o’clock and started discussing how to best make use of our time and energy. By 9:30 everyone had grabbed a bucket, gloves and trash grabbers and walked down the steep embankment to the water’s edge.
The cleanup crew consisted of: Janet Beaso, Catherine Benson, Paige Bullman, Jess and Houston Clifton, Brynne Di Donato, Tess Finkle, Dave and Jean Merrill, Kent Morris, Linda Nicholes, Lee O’Donnell, Darlene Summers, Adwin Timmermans, and Steve Tyler.
Mutual Friends & New Friends
We had several special guests with us on this fine day. We met them through our mutual friends at Humble Brands. They sell products such as deodorants, lip balms, and soap. As they state on their website, “We never use aluminum, talc, parabens, SLS, or synthetic fragrance or color, and we now offer our deodorant in a biodegradable, plastic-free package.”
Humble Brands products - visit https://humblebrands.com/collections/all
It was really special to have ocean conservation advocate Jess Clifton and her partner Houston with us. Jess shared about her channel cleanup experience on her Instagram account, giving her keen perspective on the devastation large amounts of trash cause, and how a group of dedicated people who truly care about the environment can make a huge difference.
Also with us today were the PR team from Metro Public Relations led by their fearless leader Founder Tess Finkle and joined by Junior Publicist Brynne Di Donato and Account Coordinator Paige Bullman. It’s really inspirational to meet people who care so much about our precious oceans that they’re willing to come out on their day off. Thank you, Metro Team for coming out!
Humble Brands generously gave us some of their products to share with the volunteers, which was a delight for everyone. They included some of their newest product which is their Rockrose & Cedar deodorant – Jason Momoa’s signature line with that directly supports ODA’s mission of removing man-made debris threatening marine wildlife and habitats. Whenever someone purchases Rockrose & Cedar, they’re helping protect the oceans because ODA receives a portion of the sales.
Humble Brands Rockrose deodorant
In fact, Humble Brands has also been making very generous donations to ODA ever since they found out about us for which we are grateful. Enough so that they fiscally sponsored this cleanup. Thank you Team Humble Brands – from us and the whales!
Back to the Mission at Hand
Since we had been to this site a few months ago, we weren’t seeing a whole lot of big stuff at first. But there were thousands of tiny pieces of plastic spread all over the place. This is important to get out of the environment, but we could spend days in one small spot and still not get it all. These are the smaller fragments of the larger pieces that had disintegrated due to the weathering process.
As those microplastics make their way to the ocean it makes for a toxic soup in the water column. It’s been estimated that filter feeders, such as blue whales off California, consume 130 pounds of this plastic EVERY day!
I tried to coax people to keep moving; there was bigger stuff further up the channel. But it’s difficult to just leave that stuff behind. Eventually we made our way further up the channel and the pieces were getting bigger and more intact.
As our time was running out, we had to be out of there by noon, I found a spot that had hundreds, if not thousands, of plastic items. Knowing we needed to wrap this up, I asked everyone to spend an intense10 minutes working this site and see what difference we could make. Those 10 minutes really paid off, as you can see here from the before and after pictures.
As is usually the case when we spend so much time coming face to face with the reality of our disposable society, there is a wave of anger that we feel, but…it soon gets turned into pride. It feels good to know that you made a difference for the animals that will not be ingesting any of the 500 pounds of plastics we removed on this day.
If you’re in Southern California, come on out and join us sometime! We not only do regular cleanups here at Bolsa Chica Channel but we’re also the only nonprofit permitted to clean the adjacent 900-acre protected wetlands (Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge). Email us and we’ll get you out with us!
