Santa Cruz Island debris
Waking up off Santa Cruz Island, in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary was a real treat. We had a nice breakfast, and then everybody got busy with a variety of chores, Capt Mark and Dave workng on the boat in the engine room, Martijn outside with a mask and snorkel cleaning the hull and making sure all the intakes were clear. Dan and Shauna went off for a paddle in the kayakes to see what they could find, and I worked on the blogs and GPS usint for a while.
Santa Cruz Island Debris
We pulled-up the hook at about noon, and set a course for Santa Barbara, about 25 miles due north… Within five minutes, Martijn sees debris, and we all spring to various posts… he keeps an eye on the trash as if it’s a man overboard… I grad a net, and Mike grabs the GPS. We get that piece, then see another and another… in all we spend 45 minutes “on the way” to Santa Barbara, picking up trash in the Marine Sanctuary… kind of sad to see all that debris out in such an otherwise pristine area. Most of the trash we collected was candy wrappers and chips bags, with one Walmart shopping bag, the closest point to Santa Barbara – at least we had something handy to put it all in as we emptied the trash when we got to shore…
Here’s a map of that data collection – click to see a larger version…