Club Makes a Clean Sweep at Crystal Cove

Organized beach cleanups have become a regular sight in Orange County, but a UC Irvine club decided to take it, not one, but two steps farther Sunday: combining a beach cleanup with a reef cleanup and restoration of coastal sage bushes.

After a month of planning, the Student Underwater Diving Society at UCI attracted more than 100 volunteers to “The Great Beach and Reef Cleanup.”

Volunteers gathered at the state park at 8 a.m. and stayed after noon to barbecue and receive prizes, which included a trip to Catalina Island and diving gear. Some were high school students from as far away as Diamond Bar; others live on the state park.

“We didn’t know what to expect because it’s a novel idea,” said the diving society’s president, Dan Oppenheim, 24. Looking at the gloomy skies, he added: “The weather’s kind of prohibiting many cleanup volunteers.”

The group adopted Crystal Cove beach because it is the closest one to campus, he said.

“It’s not the dirtiest beach in the world, but we just wanted to raise awareness that reefs also need to be cleaned and the sage brushes do need to be revegetated,” Oppenheim said.

Will Hayden and Gregor Hsiao were two of about 10 divers who picked garbage off the underwater reefs at the south end of the beach. They said they found mostly paper cups.

“This one’s a lot cleaner than the Back Bay” in Newport Beach, said Hayden, 14, who will be a sophomore at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana this fall.

Hsiao, a 26-year-old graduate student at UCI, said the coast usually is dirtier at the end of summer after several months of litter from beach-goers.

“There’s hardly anyone out there now,” he said.

On bluffs overlooking the north end of the beach, 10 volunteers planted sage seedlings that were grown in a UCI lab. They put a nest of hay around each tender, green twig to protect the new growth from weeds and foot traffic.

This is the first time revegetation was tried with seedlings. The state planted seeds in the same ground three times, but surrounding flowering weeds were too strong for the seeds to take hold, said Dru van Hengel, a 29-year-old graduate student who learned of the cleanup through her Environmental Ethics class.

Cindy Heal, 40, said she helped collect sage seeds last year so lab workers could grow them. Sunday morning, she was at the beach at 8:30 to plant the shoots.

“I’m just here out of my interest of living near the beach,” Heal said.

The sage scrubs are needed to prevent the erosion of the bluffs and serve as a natural habitat for wildlife, the cleanup organizers said.

Sponsors hope to make the combination cleanup and sage restoration an annual event, Oppenheim said.

UCI provided volunteers with a free shuttle bus from the campus to the beach. Free parking was available at Crystal Cove State Park for those who drove.

A $3 registration fee helped to cover the cost of the event, Oppenheim said. Any remaining funds will be donated to environmental protection groups such as the Crystal Cove Interpretive Assn. and the Surfrider Foundation, he said.