What a Bay for a Spring Cleaning : Volunteers Spruce Up Newport Harbor, Finding Less Trash Than Years Past

“Starboard! Turn starboard!” shouted Buddy Fort, a graphics designer from Fullerton, as he leaned outside a boat on Newport Harbor’s Back Bay and aimed a fishing net toward something afloat that gleamed in the sun.

“Oh, it’s only foam,” Fort said, crestfallen. A few minutes later his face lit up at the sight of a potato chip bag within easy reach.

Fort was aboard Class Act, one of about a dozen boats, ranging from kayaks to motor boats and tugboats, that hit the water Saturday morning filled with volunteers searching for trash to bag. They were part of the 15th annual Clean Harbor Day in Newport Beach.

From 8 a.m. to noon, about 500 volunteers, including members of Boy Scout troops, owners of Newport Beach businesses and amateur divers, joined forces to collect five tons of trash.

Debris was skimmed off the water with nets and rakes, hauled off the beach or picked from the bottom of the bay. The catch included the usual plastic foam cups, tennis balls and cigarette butts. Volunteers also collected a car tire, a shopping cart, wine glasses, two dead rats, a bicycle, underwear and a jar of pickled peppers.

But the consensus was that, compared to other years, the harbor was remarkably clean. The improvement was attributed in part to city cleanup activity after this year’s storms and in part to growing public interest in protecting the bay.

“Even the old salts said it was surprising there was so little debris to pick up and the divers said the visibility was greater than they have ever seen,” said Cameron Quinn, who headed the event.

“We have the least trash and the most volunteers we have ever had. It proves the message is getting across,” said Bill Hamilton, owner of the Cannery Restaurant and the man who founded Clean Harbor Day to increase public awareness about the need to stop polluting the bay.

Hamilton said he had grown distressed by the unsightliness of the dead-end channel just outside his restaurant’s windows.

Hamilton said Newport Harbor is sullied not only by waste discarded from the homes and 9,000 boats lining its shoreline, but by inland communities whose trash is washed through 900 storm drains that empty into the bay.

On Saturday, the Cannery was the headquarters for the annual cleanup, which is sponsored by the Newport Harbor Area Chamber of Commerce.

Among the eager participants, Vikki Swanson, 31, of Balboa Island spent the morning paddling her small kayak into hard-to-reach spots close to shore where trash accumulated.

“The cleaner the bay is, the better it is,” said Swanson, who had collected “lots of food wrappers and tons of Styrofoam” as well as a fragment of a fishing pole and tennis balls.

“We had a blast,” said Robin Walker, 36, who accompanied a dozen Cub Scouts and their families from Fullerton. The children liked riding in a small boat that bounced, dousing them with water. “They enjoyed getting wet,” she said. So did a pet dog who jumped out of the boat to swim.

Richard Banks, 59, a salesman from Newport Beach, hosted about a dozen eager trash collectors on his 30-foot motor boat, Rock ‘n Reel. As skipper of these trash scavengers, his job was extremely demanding, he said.

“It was a lot of practice maneuvering the boat,” he said, “especially when everybody pointed out six pieces of trash in different places at one time.”

Banks said that when his passengers spotted trash on the beach, he let some of them off at a dock to scour the shoreline.

Carol Johnson and Paul and Helena Kritz, co-owners of a Newport Beach travel agency, spent the morning searching beaches for trash and came up with one full bag between them. “I thought it would be a lot dirtier,” said Johnson, 44, of Costa Mesa.