"Save Our Shores" is organizing a Santa Cruz County Coastal Cleanup Day for Saturday, September 19, 2009:
Santa Cruz County's 25th Anniversary Coastal Cleanup Day | Save Our Shores
They include a scuba option through Aqua Safari's of Santa Cruz:
Aqua Safaris Coastal Cleanup Day
This is how I spent my last diving adventure. It definitely was worth doing, but it was a very different sort of diving.
We arrived early -- a little after 8:00 AM. My buddy was much later and I was slow to gear up. (He'd probably say that's typical.) Nonetheless, we were the first to hit the water at 9:45.
We entered with a giant stride off public dock #2 (if I recall correctly). This is the dock nearest the end of the wharf. We kicked out to where the wharf narrows, about halfway to the end, then descended into the muck.
Visibility was an astonishing 10' near the surface. It was about 4' at the bottom, 36' down. Apparently this is great visibility for Santa Cruz. Once we started rooting around in the silt, visibility dropped to about a foot. It was a balmy 56ºF.
We didn't swim far underwater. I think we moved a total of 12 feet. We found a pile of debris and spent 45 minutes cutting and digging out what we could. My buddy's air was up, our hands were full and our bag was half full. We met a kayaker at the surface where we handed off what wouldn't fit in our bag. We swam back to get fresh tanks.
Topside our support crew was cataloging our find: one-half crab trap, one baby stroller (no baby), several pounds of rope, some monofilament and assorted other items of trash. Other divers returned with more crab traps, lots of monofilament and trash. They also happened to come up with two small octopuses and a baby eel. The sea life was a big hit with the support crew. They put the octopuses in my mask case for all to see before returning them to the deep.
Our second dive was more of the same. The current picked up, improving the vis noticeably. This time we kicked out to very near the end of the wharf before descending. Again we didn't swim far before finding another crab trap and bunch of tangled rope and monofilament. This time it all came out easily. We made a quick trip to the surface to hand it off to a support kayak and went back for more.
Our next piling had more rope in big knots near the base. About this time our supporting commercial diver came by to check on us and drop off a knife-full of monofilament in our bag. Imagine looking up from minutes of cutting in 2' vis seeing a huge 8" knife coming out of the dark.
I wasn't expecting that. It took me a few seconds to realize all he wanted was for me to take the monofilament off his knife. After that I showed him the ropes I was working at and he took over with his big knife. My buddy and I headed off in search of more treasure.
Overall, the cleanup team of 36 divers and 12 surface support people collected nearly 70 pounds of junk from under the wharf. The vis was poor enough that we didn't get to see much. I was told the site had some great nudibranchs, but I didn't see even one. I did see many sea stars -- some quite large. I also saw a variety of crab -- even wrestled one for a fishing lure.
We did see (and smell) many sea lions. They were only 10 feet away as we swam along the wharf. We were told to surface quietly if we surfaced under the wharf; otherwise one of those heavy creatures might drop on us. Honestly, I cannot imagine a sea lion giving up its perch for a diver; they fight so much to keep them. On my last surface swim back I kept my reg in and looked down as swam. I had the pleasure of seeing one of the smaller sea lions swim just underneath me. He surfaced a few feet behind me with a look that seemed to say "want to come play?"
What really made the dives interesting was working underwater. I'd been a site-seer on all my prior dives. For these two I spent my time cutting and pulling. I learned that EMT-style sheers work way better than a dive knife on just about everything I tried to cut. But, my hands sure got tired of cutting. Most of the time I found it easier to break the monofilament by pulling rather than cutting. (But I wouldn't want to count on that in an entanglement situation.)
Working in such low vis was interesting, too. Digging in the muck required patience to wait long enough for it to clear when we wanted to see what remained to be done. More than once I looked up and didn't see where my buddy was. I learned to just wait, look for his light and look up for his bubbles. (I had a light stick on my BC, he did not.) Sometimes he was only 4-6 feet away when I couldn't see him.
Occasionally I was frustrated that I didn't have the sign language to convey what I wanted or understand what he wanted. With patience we worked it out.
I also had some good lessons in buoyancy control. Touch the bottom and there goes the vis for the next 20 seconds or so. How do you pull on a rope without touching the bottom? It was fun to try to work all this out. It became even more challenging when the surge picked up on the second dive. I found that I was bracing my head against the piling to get leverage pulling. I just had to make sure I wasn't squooshing some creature. I also did a lot of hand work just by feel. I took care to ensure I didn't ever feel the sharp end of the snips.
It was a good day of diving, doing good work with good people. I expect I'll do it again next year -- maybe sooner.
