By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

Early in October we got hit with several days of heavy rains and extremely high tides. While that is always welcome news for our parched environment, it unfortunately means we can count on a deluge of plastics getting washed off our streets and slowly making its way to the ocean.

Just to jump ahead of the story a little bit, to show you the extent of the problem...please see this sad photo of a sandpiper walking amongst the trash. Birds and other wildlife often mistake bits of garbage for food and the thought of this precious bird eating any of that is heartbreaking.

Many dead animals have been found with plastics in their stomachs -- it's a tragedy that ODA works to prevent.That's why we do what we do -- with your support!

Sandpiper surrounded by all kinds of rubbish -- ODA arrives to collect and properly dispose of the detrius.

In anticipation of this barage of floating trash, I contacted the good folks at the Orange County Public Works, California, and requested permission to do a cleanup at a stretch of river channel that we have adopted. It’s in Huntington Beach, along Edinger Blvd. We’ve been cleaning this site several times a year over the last 4 years, it’s called the Bolsa Chica Channel (BCC).

We posted notices on our social media platforms as well as our website, hoping to get a good showing for the day of the event.

We set the date for Saturday, Oct. 24^th. I got there the day before and surveyed the area, so I’d know where to make the most of our 3 hours getting the biggest bang for our buck.

After I figured that out, I drove over to the directly adjacent Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge (SBNWR) to see what I could see as far as bird life is concerned.

Great blue heron

The BCC runs along the border to the SBNWR, and most of the debris that we see in the channel will end up getting siphoned through the Refuge before it makes its way out to the ocean, which is about a half mile away.

It’s always a treat for me to spend time in the Refuge as it’s pretty much just me and the wildlife. The Refuge is inside a Navy base, and you need special permit to get onto the base, which ODA possesses. As such, I rarely see anyone in these 960 acres of wetlands.

Great egret

As I was driving around the Refuge I spotted a lot of the usual inhabitants, great blue herons, great egrets, turkey vultures, huge flocks of sandpipers, and lots of smaller birds. But at one spot I saw a small flock of birds that I couldn’t quite identify.

Horned Lark - showing one side of the horns

They were scattered throughout some low-lying bushes but were patrolling the ground looking for bugs and insects to eat. Since I had no idea what kind of birds these were, and couldn’t get close enough to really see them, I tried to get some pictures that I could later zoom in on.

Horned Lark - both horns showing

It wasn’t until I got home and pulled the images up on my computer that I found out what they were: Horned larks! Always special when I get to add a new species to the photos I get to share with you.

Then, there's their not so adorable fellow birds...but they're part of the ecosystem, too!

Turkey vultures

Back to the task at hand: BCC

It was sunny the moment we showed up at 9am. Nary a cloud in the sky. Within 10 minutes we had 4 people show up. Not what I had been hoping for, but I’m thankful for these hardy souls who were determined to make the most of the time we had there. The Crew consisted of: Kent Morris, Linda Nicholes, Laura Pelligrini, and Steve Tyler.

We headed to the spot where I had found an insane amount of trash the day before, and everyone grabbed their buckets, pickers, and trash bags on got to work.

This was an endurance test, as there was so much stuff along the banks that we hardly had to move our feet. I’d say we covered 150 yards of the bank before we called it quits around 11:30am.

We hauled all the bags and bulky stuff over to one spot and got our pictures with our “Catch of the Day.” It had an estimated weight of 1,150 pounds.

I want to thank Lisa Taylor for helping. She had to work on the day of the event but showed up the day before and hauled up about 100 pounds of trash on her own, which I’m including in the final tally.

Half a ton of plastics will NOT be headed to the open ocean!

If you live in Southern California, please shoot us an email and then join us on the next cleanup -- you'll love it!