By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

To prove the old axiom, “a few people can make a big difference,” ODA had 5 hardy volunteers participate at the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge (SBNWR) on Wednesday, April 9^th.

All our volunteers need special permits to get into the Refuge because it’s inside a military base.

Dave and Jean Merrill, Kent Morris, Darlene Summers and I met up at 9 am, and 15 minutes later equipped with trash bags, buckets, and trash pickers and we waded into the wetlands.

I always arrive the day before the event so I can do reconnaissance to find the area with the largest amount of trash. This also gives me time to look for and hopefully get some pictures of the wildlife of this habitat. 

When I first pulled into the Refuge, I saw a species of bird I don’t recall ever seeing there before: Black-necked stilts. Wholly mackerel what an elegant bird. Check those legs out!

After I gorged on taking dozens of pictures of them, I made my way further around the wetlands. At one point I saw a great egret. It was in full breeding plumage, and I settled in to get some pictures. Then I noticed it was acting kind of funny, shaking his head from side to side. As I kept taking pictures, I saw a black plastic zip tie around its neck.

Guess while he was poking his beak in the water to catch a fish, he got the thing looped around the neck and now it slid down all the way to its gullet.  Knowing that he would not be able to swallow anything larger than a small animal, I told my main contact at the Friends of the Refuge about it.  Her name is Chloe, and she said she would try to capture it and remove that zip tie.

Seeing that made me feel more adamant about getting every little piece of plastic out of there.  You just never realize how one small piece can devastate a life…

Back to the cleanup

I settled on a section of the wetlands where I saw lots of plastics in the water and sticking to the surrounding plants.

Because we’ve cleaned this area before, the debris was not concentrated in one central area, so we all spread out.  By the time we had finished, two-and-a-half hours later, we covered about 300 yards of territory.

Ocean Defenders Crew with their Catch of the Day

It was a great way to spend the morning. Fun people to hang out with, and we successfully removed about 350 pounds of plastics.

One thing you can count on is that thanks to our volunteers and donors, we WILL be back!

If you want to help make sure ODA can keep removing rubbish and plastic to keep wildlife safe, please make the most generous donation possible. You can see from Kurt’s report that removing the smallest bits of debris could save lives!