Divers find a toilet, bicycles, chairs and piles of other junk hidden in the deeps of the Dana Point Harbor during clean up

Kyle Campbell pulled the black LG cell phone from the muck, surrounded by darkness. The 18-year-old diver could see only inches from his face, so he tucked the phone away for later and groped for more lost treasure on the Harbor’s squishy bottom.

“It’s fun to see what’s down there,” said Campbell, breathing hard after his father helped pull him from the Harbor waters up onto the dock. He unstrapped his weight belt and corrected himself. “It was more like feeling what’s down there.”

Thirty divers participated in the first annual Dana Point Harbor Underwater Cleanup event on May 2, a rare opportunity for submerged explorers to investigate the depths of waters normally off-limits. The divers piled heaps of trash onto the docks as they discovered debris hidden in the mud, including a toilet, two bicycles, chairs, tools, bait buckets and at least six cell phones.

While the divers had their fun, Harbor officials stood on dry-land and spoke to how the event is the latest effort to keep the Harbor environment clean. “This event is part of our ever developing water improvements we’re implementing in the Harbor,” said Brad Gross, Harbor Director at the OC Dana Point Harbor. “Our main goal in this is water quality.”

Earlier this year, the county finished a spot dredging project that included sand replenishment at Baby Beach. Officials hope that removing the old sand and replacing it with fresh sand will ultimately improve water quality. Later this year the county and city will partner with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in two studies looking at water circulation and the condition of the Harbor’s breakwaters, paid for by $828,000 of federal stimulus money signed by President Barack Obama in March.

Gross said the cleanup is another tool to keep the waters clean. “It was safe, it was fun and it cleaned up a section of the Harbor,” said Gross. “We’ll do it again with the same goals in mind.”

Divers called the event an unusual adventure that fulfilled curiosity while improving technique working in a dark environment.

“This was a whole new experience,” said Ruth Harris, who dove with her husband Larry. “It was strictly a feel your way around experience. It was pitch black.”

The Harris team discovered a set of tools and a dog leash with, luckily, “no dog attached to it.” Ruth also said she touched something “alive” and was relieved when it didn’t come back.

Many divers found something they didn’t expect. Laurel Silver-Walker, a school teacher from King City, found a dust buster, knives, tools and a chair. Victor Chu of Tustin Ranch found a pile of rebar, a spool of wire and a chair overrun with barnacles. He still sat it in for photos. Jeff Griffin, one of two Dana Point divers at the cleanup, found a skateboard, a fan and batteries.

One by one the divers emerged from the water, piling the foul smelling trash on the docks and in a nearby parking lot. South Orange County Dive Club president Konrad Fry traveled the docks, camcorder in hand, documenting his colleagues finds.

“You never would be able to dive in a Harbor unless you did an event like this,” he said. “It’s a dive adventure. Anything out of the regular dives is fantastic.”

According to Sgt. John Whitman of the Dana Point Harbor Patrol divers are normally only allowed to enter the waters with a business permit from the county and must stay out of the channels. “They can’t impede boating traffic,” he said. “We ask them to stay out of the channel.”

The Harbor Patrol aided the cleanup by patrolling the channel outside docks A, B, C and D, and the local United State Coast Guard Auxiliary sent four Maritime Domain Awareness Inspectors out to keep any boaters from accidently injuring the volunteer divers. Tony Dallendorfer led the Inspectors and shared in laughs with the divers as trash was pulled from the deeps. “You’re going to have one heck of a garage sale,” he joked.

While nothing found was deemed valuable, Whitman said that had anything of value been found—a diamond wedding ring for example—the diver would have been required to turn it in. Whitman also said any potential evidence, like a handgun, would also need to be turned in so investigators could link the discarded firearm to earlier crimes.

The rusting tools and waterlogged cell phones, however, were free game to the divers who found them. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s garbage,” he said. “If you want to keep it, knock yourself out.”

Whitman also spoke to the penalties of dumping in the Harbor and said that his deputies rarely catch someone in the act.

“It’s rare,” said Whitman. “First off, it’s very hard to catch someone dumping, especially something like toilets or bikes, which go under and leave no reside behind. Unless we actually see someone doing it, or have an informant who saw them doing it, it would be really tough for us to do something about it.”

If caught, boaters would pay a fine or worse if the material was deemed hazardous.

While some boaters may dump unwanted trash into the dark waters, the Harbor staff believes most of the items found during the cleanup were likely lost by accident. “I mean, who wants to lose their bike?” asked Harbor operations manager Paul Lawrence. “I can’t think that someone would intentionally throw their bike into the water.”

“We found batteries with the cap still on it,” said Gross. “There’s a good chance that somehow that made it into the water without anyone knowing. Boaters might walk away from the dock and come back to find their chair missing and assume someone just walked away with it.”

Lawrence guesses that the piles of trash found during the cleanup was more a result of decades of accidents than frequent dumping. “This is the first time we’re aware of that there has ever been an underwater cleanup here,” he said. “Given that, I’m not surprised we’re finding a variety of items.”

However the items got there, the divers were more than happy to remove them. Ruth Harris lauded the Harbor department and the staff of the Dana Point Marina Company for hosting the event and promised to return if and when more cleanups are held.

“The hospitality of these people is just overwhelming,” she said. “These guys are great. They’ve made us feel more than welcome and needed. We’ll be back.”

Dive team leader Jason Manix nears the surface with a load as he and other divers work to cut a fishing net off the trawler Infidel, which sank about two years ago. Scuba divers working with the Ocean Defenders Alliance have been trying to release a net that has been catching and killing ocean dwellers since the trawler Infidel sank off Catalina Island.

By Louis Sahagun

In the wee hours one morning in 2006, the trawler Infidel sank off the southern end of Santa Catalina Island, taking several tons of squid and a 9,000-pound fishing net down with it.

The Infidel came to rest on its keel, about 150 feet under the sea. But in the turbid currents, the fine-mesh hemp and polypropylene net — 40 feet high, several hundred feet long and made to last thousands of years — wrapped itself around the wreck and became a deadly snare for marine life.

It has been entangling and killing sea lions, dolphins, sharks and fish ever since, littering the sandy bottom with skulls and bones picked clean by crabs.

On Sunday morning, a team of volunteer scuba divers armed with filet knives and shears began cutting away the danger. Guided only by flashlights, they sliced off swaths of the netting, which they then attached to inflatable air bags that rose to the surface. From there, the netting was hauled aboard the 75-foot trawler Captain Jack.

The potentially dangerous mission was organized by Ocean Defenders Alliance, a nonprofit marine conservation group based in Huntington Beach and founded by Kurt Lieber.

Rising out of the clear blue water, Lieber removed his mask and said, “It’s one of the spookiest things I’ve ever seen.

“It’s a huge vessel encased in a net — anything that swims into it gets trapped in its billows,” he said. “The enormity of the task before us is daunting. We’re making a little bit of difference today. But we have a long way to go.”

The team of seasoned divers included Avalon Mayor Bob Kennedy, owner of Catalina Scuba Luv, and employees of three other scuba stores on the island. Also on board were UC Irvine marine biologist William Cooper, nature-film maker Tony Christopher and Avalon harbor patrolman Jason Manix. Use of the 200-ton Captain Jack was donated by its owner, Mike Hoover.

“We’ve all put aside our differences as competitors in the scuba industry . . . and united behind a common cause,” Manix said. “Catalina is our backyard, and we don’t want this kind of garbage in it.”

Cinde MacGugan, 36, a store manager at Catalina Diver Supply, led a group of team members who sliced off roughly 200 square yards of netting within 30 minutes.

Removing her flippers after spending 60 minutes under water, MacGugan said: “We got a lot of wins on that one — but it was one of the scariest dives in my life.

“Once you start cutting, visibility drops from 30 feet to zero because the water clouds up with particles and tiny creatures that get shaken loose,” she said. “At one point, I was frantically cutting off pieces of netting when one or more was tugged upward by an air bag.

“I looked around and discovered that I was in a kill zone. There were tons of bones and a bunch of sea lion skulls by the propeller and a whole shark caught in the fabric. My fellow divers were close by and had their eyes on me as I backed out into the clear.”

The limit for normal scuba diving is 120 feet beneath the surface. But because of the depth of the wreck and the 20 minutes per dive needed to hack off appreciable portions of fishing gear, the divers relied on tanks filled with a special nitrous oxide mixture that enabled them to spend more time at the bottom while reducing the chances of contracting the bends, or decompression sickness.

By midafternoon, the team had raised about 800 square feet of netting, which was piled in a corner of Captain Jack’s big wooden back deck.

Wind-driven waves bucked the hull as several children on board plucked a variety of critters — strawberry anemones, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, shrimp, crabs and snails — off the retrieved netting and tossed them back into the ocean.

Kennedy speculated that it would take as many as nine more diving days to retrieve the bulk of the net after the Infidel teeter-tottered into the sea near Church Rock, a natural landmark at the southern end of the island and about 22 miles from the mainland.

Shortly after the vessel went down, its owners called Kennedy for help, initially thinking their biggest problem was an underwater fuel hazard.

Eventually, he said, “the owner’s insurance company paid him for the value of the boat,” but it remained a hazard under the sea. “The net draped over the Infidel like a circus tent,” he said.

“Worldwide, there are many thousands of derelict killer nets like this one, abandoned and adrift in the in the seas,” said marine biologist Cooper. “In one case, abandoned fishing gear in Puget Sound was studied for 10 years. An estimated 30,000 marine mammals, fish and birds were killed each year in it.”

Shaking his head in dismay, Cooper added, “There seem to be no laws when it comes to dumping in the open ocean.”

Living and working in a tropical paradise takes responsibility, we take this responsibility by supporting local efforts with technical support and logistics. We donate boat space, diving equipment and facilities for individuals conducting ecological assessments, clean ups, bio rock initiatives and training.

We also use our popular news section to create awareness of global ecological problems.

Underwater Cleanup

Big Blue Tech crew supports and volunteers underwater and beach cleanups monthly to help keep Koh Tao clean. Being technically trained means we have the skills and equipment to stay down much longer and recover large and dangerous items.

Beach Cleanup

We’re always happy to clean the beach and roads around our area, we even donate the Deep Jeep to help cart the garbage away for disposal. We’re not a particularly messy company but we feel its our responsibility to clean up since we brought the technology and mess here in the first place. And there’s usually great parties after.

Awareness

Our resort has stopped serving food items that are listed through Project Aware, we make sure to educate divers on the effects of humans on the underwater environment and are always willing to give free lectures and seminars to the local community. We also have our local staff educate their friends and family about the effects of waste and pollutants.

Wreck Preservation

We need our wrecks, when we have the time we work to preserve the items on the wreck before the sea bed burry them. We also help to educate people about being responsible and careful with what to remove from wrecks and what should remain. Quite often we dedicate dives to removing hazards and fish traps from the wrecks to protect marine life and keep the wreck clear and safe to dive.