By Volunteer and ODA Advisory Board Member Marjorie Zensen

It was a balmy July day in Kona as the new Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA) boat, the mighty Makau, headed out with a crew of 7.

Divers for this July 17^th project were volunteers Juan Chacin, John and Henry Gallagher, Cheri and Robert Trimble, and me. Sarah Milisen handled the captain’s duties as we headed out to sea.

The great thing about having our own boat is that we can do different things, clean up areas that we cannot normally access. So, we headed to an area in Kailua Bay where we knew there were still more tires to extract.

Jeff Milisen and John Gallagher had done some scoping previously with the DPV’s (UW scooters), towing a GPS buoy along with them, and marking tires along their route. We went to their markers 9 from earlier and 7 today, just off the Kailua Pier. 

The sky was blue, the ocean was lovely, and the sun was shining. With that picture in my head, I jumped off the Makau. As I dropped down into the ocean, the picture switched. Do you remember Viewfinders? It was like I switched to the next image on a Viewfinder, and it was not as beautiful as the previous image. The visibility was poor as there was a current bringing all kinds of crud in. There was little coral, and few fish. It’s a busy area in the bay and it shows.

We finally found what we were looking for though. A big truck tire. I use the word “extraction” because that is what it feels like. You dig, shoveling sand away from the tire, trying to release the suction, to free the tire from its sandy grave. Plumes of sand reduce the visibility to zero. And despite our best efforts, at least on this day, we were not meant to have the tire.

But there were others in the area, so we set our sights on them, determined to pull at least one of these toxic-leaching habitat wreckers. And we did! It was not easy but with perseverance it was sent to the surface via one of our handy inflatable lift bags. By this time, two of our divers were back on the boat and were able to accept the gift that had been sent up and pull it safely on board.

We found a few other trash items including a can, rope and line, a net, a buoy, retrieved at the surface and a large cover to a Furuno marine radar system!  It was mistakenly marked as a tire originally; it was that big!  While the cover may not sound very exciting,

Ocean Defenders dedicated volunteer crew with their "catch of the day"!

I see it as keeping whole lot of future micro plastics out of the ocean as well as preventing it from becoming a battering ram to the corals during a storm! 

All in all, it was a good day. And even though we didn’t pull a huge amount from the ocean, every single bit is important! 

Thank you, especially to our monthly donors, for getting us out there and cleaning on a regular basis!!!

If you'd like to help clean the ocean this way, too, we invite you to become a monthly donor!