By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
International Coastal Cleanup Day has been going on since 1985. This year, on September 21st, Ocean Defender Alliance (ODA) volunteers joined a legion of 1.6 million volunteers from 150 different countries to dig into the mud and remove a massive number of plastics and other harmful waste from the coastal waters and wetlands around the world.
This year we decided to focus our efforts on a very debris-littered section of the 965-acre Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge (SBNWR) wetlands in Orange County, California.
ODA has been removing hundreds of pounds from this refuge in support of the Friends of the Refuge, which is a non-profit organization that focuses solely on the health of this critically important salt marsh.
Most people don’t know about this site because it’s on property that is owned by the US Navy. One needs a special permit to gain access to the marsh, because the Navy controls entry for security purposes.
For this day, there were several organizations that brought volunteers from all over southern California. Each group was assigned a specific location to work on. Chloe Van Grotheest did an outstanding job of organizing all the different groups. She’s a biologist that works for the Navy. Thank you, Chloe!
ODA was asked to work in an area where we’ve never been before. It’s adjacent to a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway and only a quarter mile from the ocean. This spot is the last piece of land that plastic trash calls “home” before the light-weight debris gets sucked out by the tides that deliver the plastic into the Pacific Ocean. There’s little chance of this rubbish ever being recovered once it hits the open ocean.
Volunteers for this day were: Dave Merrill, Jean Merrill, Kent Morris, Linda Nicholes, and Lisa Stumph. This was Lisa’s first time out with us, and she brought us not only a lot of energy but good luck. too. Glad to have you on our cleanup crew, Lisa!
The day started under gray cloudy skies, but with all the enthusiasm everybody had, it felt like the warmth of the sun was upon us.
I got there a little before 9am to meet with some guys from the Navy Police who had to open the gate in order for us to make our way down a steep embankment to get to this very polluted stretch of the wetlands. This area is fenced in, and normally, the public is not allowed in. As you can see here, the place was awash with litter from humankind.
It was heartbreaking to look at, but with only two-and-a-half hours to do our cleanup, we had zero time to get emotional. We got to work immediately and only stopped when we knew we had to be out of there, at 11:30am.
Knowing that it was going to be a long time before we could be back in this area, we never took a break. So, this was more a sprint than a marathon…
We’ve been doing these kinds of coastal cleanups for over 15 years now, so I’m kind of numb from all I’ve seen. But this felt different. I’ve rarely seen so much trash in such a short stretch of land. Just indescribable. Maybe you’ll feel the same after seeing some of these pictures.
The vast majority of the debris was single use items: water bottles, food wrappers, plastic cups (so degraded that they break apart into a hundred pieces just touching them), chunks of polystyrene (Styrofoam), one time use ketchup/mustard/hot sauce containers. Then there were items that had you scratching your head: a car dashboard, a stuffed bear, milk crates, bicycle parts, foam bed mattresses, a two-man snow toboggan?
All this stuff was mere feet from having the tide pull it out of the sea grasses and then it would be out into the open ocean…
When we first climbed down the embankment and saw the enormity of it all, I thought there was no way we were going to make a dent. But two-and-a-half hours later, the place looked rejuvenated. We even had some cool birds stop by and check out our handiwork!
As the bewitching hour approached, we started hauling all the bags and loose items to our staging area. We posed for a few pictures and then hauled the stuff up to the side of the road, where CalTrans would pick it up later.
In all, I estimate that we got 960 pounds out of there! Very productive day. There were other groups working in four other areas of the Refuge as well, and in total it’s estimated that the 125 volunteers working this Coastal Cleanup Day removed about 4,000 pounds. I’m sure the birds and fish are eating a healthier diet now.
If you're in Southern California, and you'd like to join in our monthly cleanups at SBNWR, please send us an email and we'll look forward to doing this good work with you!
