It’s 7.30 in the morning in Ventura Harbor and around 30 volunteers are ready to go. We board a boat to head out to Santa Cruz Island in the Santa Barbara Channel, about 30 miles off the coast.
But this isn’t a pleasure cruise, they are going there to pick up trash and marine debris on a one-day Channel Islands clean-up.
"The Santa Barbara Channel is one of the most vibrant, ecologically important bodies of water, explained Molly Troup, the Science and Program Manager for Santa Barbara Channelkeeper – a non-profit who work to protect and restore the Channel and its watersheds.
This is just one of the four clean ups like this they run each year.
"We see lots of different whale species and dolphins and all kinds of important animals here," Troup told KCLU.
For volunteer Lisa Werner, it’s a passion to help to collect trash from beaches, and protect marine life.
"I've picked up 1,471 pounds of trash. I keep track of it on my iPhone every day," Werner told KCLU. "I don't want the baby dolphins to eat this plastic, so every time I pick up just a water bottle lid, I feel like I'm keeping that out of a baby dolphin belly."
These clean-ups are funded by the NOAA Marine Debris Program, which is part of a wider effort to remove debris from five different marine sanctuaries.
"These islands are part of a National Marine Sanctuary and a National Park and nobody lives out on these islands so it's not like just going to the beach at home and picking up trash. All the trash you see is coming from the ocean so it is really good to get a sense of how much is out there and work together," said Michaela Miller, the Acting Conservation Co-Director and Senior Conservation Manager at the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and helps to co-ordinate the mission.
The Channel Islands are especially vulnerable to marine debris, explained Marine Debris Manager for the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation Justin Boevers.
"The way the ocean currents work, it's a lot of times it works almost like a catcher's mitt, where if anything's lost or discarded, especially fishing gear, the beaches will catch it on the different islands of the Channel Islands," said Boevers.
After about 90 minutes, we arrive at Chinese Harbor on the north side of Santa Cruz island. To call it a harbor is somewhat misleading, the tide is high and this narrow stretch of coastline is reached either by kayak…for the adventurous, or by skiff for the....also adventurous.
Black trash bags and gloves are handed out and the volunteers like David Villafranca make their way carefully across the pebbles, driftwood and abalone shells which make up this unspoiled beach.
"We're here to clean up some beaches on the Channel Islands. Hopefully leave the beaches a little better than we found them," said Villafrana.
The volunteers only returning only when their bags are full, like Werner's.
"We have a Perrier bottle, a plastic water bottle, styrofoam, and an I love you balloon," she said.
And volunteer Luke Otterstedt who said he found, "a lot of like, buoys, a lot of rope, a lot of plastic water bottles, plastic tubs, like bottles of detergent, bleach, that sort of thing."
On the way back, a pod of dolphins play in the wake of the boat, as if they’re thanking this small army of volunteers. And it’s back to Ventura Harbor 9 hours after we set off, and a stop off at Channel Islands National Park Headquarters to offload the dozens of black bags of trash, along with some larger items of debris, for disposal.
