A Gilroy conservation group credited with returning steelhead trout to hundreds of miles of streams and the Pajaro River has found a much bigger fish to fry—Monterey Bay.
Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration (CHEER) last week received final approval for a one-day event to remove river-borne garbage in Monterey Bay, according to Herman Garcia, CHEER founder and CEO.
He plans to hold the event annually as a new prong in CHEER’S decade-plus effort to educate people about the damage to natural water resources caused by garbage and pollution.
“It’s symbolic of the problem in the ocean, and it’s all coming from land-based sources,” he said.
People believe ocean pollution is from commercial fishing and recreational boats, Navy ships and cruise liners, but that’s only five percent of the problem, according to Garcia.
“Ninety-five percent comes from illegal dumping into coastal watershed and there are consequences to the marine habitat,” he said.
In this region, that means the Salinas and Pajaro rivers, which drain into the Monterey Bay. The Pajaro alone drains 1,300 square miles of land in four counties and has 1,800 miles of streams.
“Every winter, with the high levels of water from storms, all the garbage gets flushed into our bay, which is federally protected,” Garcia said.
And while ocean pollution brings to mind the enormous floating garbage patch in the Pacific, that collection of refuse is dwarfed by what sinks to the ocean floors, he said.
The cleanup has approvals and strong encouragement from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Moss Landing Harbor District, on whose property the March 19 event will be staged. It’s billed as “CHEER’s First Annual Ocean Cleanup and Diving Extravaganza & Competition.”
Event sponsors and exhibitors include NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Institutes, the state Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, the Coast Guard, the Santa Cruz Resource Conservation District, the Moss Landing Harbor District, and the Green Education Foundation, among others. Nearly two dozen groups will have exhibits for the public.
And while no one knows exactly what will be found on the ocean floor, what’s pulled up, how much and by whom are expected to be the highlight of the event.
That’s because, with the help of San Jose scuba diving clubs such as the Flipper Skippers, CHEER will deploy boats and 16 certified divers to depths up to 80 feet in a cash competition to pull the most debris from the bay floor at two locations, the mouths of the Salinas and Pajaro rivers.
The event will be staged off Hwy. 1 in the north parking lot of the Moss Landing Harbor, by the Sea Harvest Restaurant. Divers will set out at 8 a.m. and return at 1 p.m.
Garcia got the idea for the event at the Garcia family Christmas dinner in 2015. A guest told him that his dive group did garbage cleanups on the bay floor to help with the abalone harvest. But those dives stopped 35 years ago, the man said.
Garcia’s reaction was immediate; “I was thinking, wow, what a wonderful idea to close our educational loop and make the connection between the watersheds and the ocean,” he said.
Within two months, Garcia had lined up his permits, exhibitors and volunteers and was ready to turn to his plan’s two most important parts, the public and the media.
“We’re losing the battle right now, there is more damage out there every day than we can keep up with; we need the help of the public and the only way to get the message out is through the media.
Garcia’s and CHEER’s work is highly regarded by others involved in marine issues.
“I applaud his efforts and I agree with is reasoning,” said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Don Kelly, based in Monterey. “He wants to be able to show a nexus between the pollution in the rivers—even in the upper areas of the watersheds—and where it actually ends up, in the ocean,” Kelly said, adding, “I really do applaud him for making people understand the totality of the system.”
The ocean floor cleanup will raise awareness of the need to keep rivers and the oceans healthy, he said. “Maybe it will make people think twice about” dumping and polluting.
If you’re interested in volunteering or in the ocean cleanup, contact Garcia at [email protected] or at [email protected] or at (408) 497-3037.
