By Founder and President Kurt Lieber
While another year falls behind us, it’s time to think about new possibilities. ODA had a very successful 2024 with a record number of tires being removed from the harbors and nearshore coasts of Hawai’i, and a mind-boggling amount of fishing line and lead hauled out as well.
Between our California operations and all we’ve done on the Island of Hawai’i (Big Island), Oahu, and Maui, we had 60 cleanup events happening. SIXTY! That’s a lot of people giving up their free time to do something special for the oceans: your dedicated Ocean Cleanup Crew
Towards the end of December a few of us here in California kept searching the beaches for abandoned lobster traps that continue to wash up on the shores. Those big winter waves can move those metal cages around like the sand on the shores!
Longtime ODA volunteer Kim Cardenas walks her dogs along the shores just outside Ventura Harbor. The breakwall there protects the harbor from the big rollers that would wash inside the harbor if it wasn’t there. That breakwall is made of thousands of large boulders which create lots of nooks and crannies for a wide variety of critters to hide in, including spiney lobsters.
The fishermen know this and set their traps about 200 feet from those rocks. When those big waves come in, some of those traps get pushed into the rocks or up onto the beach. Kim called me on Thursday, December 12th, and told me she had seen two traps at a spot called Marina Park. She said one was really buried in the sand and the other was lying on some rocks. Both of them had trap tags on them.
We met there the next morning with gloves and shovels in hand. We had no problem locating them, and the one that was buried the day before was now up on the rocks as well. This made for easy pickings.
Then we saw another trap about 100 yards away on the sand, inside the cove. That trap was not there the day before, which also illustrates how quickly things can change overnight!
We hauled all three of them up to higher ground so the incoming tide wouldn’t wash them back out to sea.
I documented the tag numbers and reported the information to my contact at the Department of Fish and Wildlife (DF&W). He said he would contact the owners and have them remove the traps that we left in a special spot for them. Sure enough, they were gone the next day.
More Washed Up Traps
A couple weeks later, some friends were in town visiting me and they wanted to know if they could remove some traps, too. Even though I had had no reports of any abandoned ones, I thought we might find some at a spot where we’d had success in the past.
On Saturday, December 28th, Allison Lance, Stacey Landsfield, and I headed up the coast to Santa Barbara. Just south of the downtown area is a wild beach called Hendry’s Beach. Two years ago, after a huge storm came in, we located and removed 15 traps. That was our largest one-day haul, EVER!
Knowing the terrain here, I made sure we got there at low tide so we wouldn’t have to dance around the big waves that pound this place on a normal day. We walked for about a quarter mile before we found our first trap. This one didn’t have a tag on it, so we had to remove it completely ourselves. If there is a tag on it, DF&W will contact the owner, and they are required to remove it. If they don’t, they will be given a ticket for polluting. Without a tag there is no way to know who owns it. So, in this case, it is up to us to remove it.
We wanted to see if we could find more, but by this time we only had 20 minutes before the tide would start rising. So, we kept at it while we could.
Along the way we were marveling at the stunning variety of rocks that were between the ocean and the cliffs. Those cliffs were probably 150 feet tall. I’m not a geologist, but one can’t help but wonder: How the heck did all these different kinds of rocks get here?
It would be fascinating to hear the geological story behind this.
At one point I stopped in my tracks and noticed a feature on a boulder that probably weighed 80 pounds. It felt like the eyes of age were staring right at me… as if crying out: “What are you doing to our planet?”
A common insult we throw at someone is to call them “dumb as a rock.” But if this rock could talk, I feel we’d hear a lot about what has come before us. The information is there, if we take the time to look and listen. Like the rings in a tree, I’m sure each one of those striations in the rock is chock full of history.
Be sure to check out the photo gallery below and see all the beautiful rock formations.
By now the tide was rolling up on us and just as we were about to turn around, we found another trap.
This one had a tag, and the buoy was still attached to it with aver 100 feet of line still attached.
I got enough information to send to my DF&W contact, so we didn’t remove it. The fisherman will be required to do that. Two days later I received a call from DF&W telling me that the trap had been removed and thanked me for informing them.
As we headed back, Allison and Stacey each grabbed one end of the trap we had found earlier and hauled it back to the parking lot.
If you see an abandoned trap on your beach walk, please do the following:
- If feasible, haul it out of the surf zone to the high tide line, so the incoming tide doesn’t drag it back out.
- Take a picture of the trap and then get closer and take a good picture of the trap tag. This identifies the trap owner.
- Visit our ODA Debris Report page where you can add brief description including date, location, and upload photos.
Your report will allow us to contact DF&W, who will then have the owner remove the trap.
You can see that even with the lobster fishing season coming to an end in mid-March, there are still things we can do to minimize the impact abandoned traps have on the nearshore reefs and beaches.
So, make sure to contact us if you come across one, or two, or three!
If you live in Southern California and would like to help out sometime, please send us an email.
