Divers Dredge the Depths in Coast Cleanup

Bruno Tuscher will never forget the urinal that got away.

He was diving in the murky surge below the Redondo Beach Pier on Saturday when it caught his eye, its stainless steel rim peering out of the swirling sand.

Tuscher would be a hero if he dragged this thing onto the beach, triumphant as he struggled through the breaking waves to greet his fellow scuba divers with the massive silver catch.

After all, Saturday was International Coastal Cleanup Day, and for the fifth year more than 100 divers in the county took the effort underwater, fishing for trash.

Unfortunately, the urinal, like a stubborn rock lobster, was not to be budged.

Tuscher tried to dig it out with his hands, but it was too heavy. Sadly, he had to move on.

On his way to shore, Tuscher swam down to grab a lost coffee mug, but was rebuffed by an octopus.

“We thought it was his home, so we left it,” Tuscher said later on the beach, huffing and sniffling, saltwater streaming from his sinuses.

The overall catch wasn’t bad, though. The divers sorted through the barnacle-encrusted haul laid out on a blue tarp: a fold-out chair, .40-caliber bullets, a pile of broken fishing poles, two grappling hooks, umbrellas, plastic bags, pagers, sunglasses, shot glasses, plastic foam cups, crab nets, a stack of fileting knives and three full beer bottles.

“People have that out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality with trash,” said Chad Thagard of Dive ‘n’ Surf in Redondo Beach, which coordinated the event. “But as scuba divers, we see it.”

The cleanup by the Redondo pier dredged about 500 pounds of refuse from the sea floor, according to the environmental group Heal the Bay. In Santa Monica, divers picked up an additional 115 pounds of garbage and 165 pounds of recyclables.

Most of the rubbish had not drifted in with the ocean currents like coconuts from Hawaii; instead, it flowed into the ocean from urban storm drains or was thrown into the water directly from the beach and piers.

Last year, when the water was clearer, Thagard said, divers in Redondo bagged about 900 pounds of trash. This year, they were blinded by an underwater sandstorm; moreover, El Nino eroded the beaches and dragged much of the flotsam into the deep canyon just offshore, to be forever lost in the abyss. On shore Saturday, 12,216 volunteers fanned out in the county, picking up 19,195 pounds of trash--mostly cigarette butts and plastic bags and cups--and 7,120 pounds of recyclables, according to Heal the Bay, which helped coordinate the overall cleanup.

The efforts were part of a campaign in 50 states--at the seashore and along lakes and rivers--and 90 countries.

At Redondo, Michelle Gonzales of Wilmington was strolling along the boardwalk with her family when she saw the Heal the Bay tent.

“I said, ‘We may as well help,’ ” she said. “We come to this beach. My [4-year-old] son has found syringes. So this is for us.”

About 10 a.m., Jennifer Powell and Mark Davenport lumbered across the beach in full wetsuits, tanks banging on their backs.

Powell usually dives near Santa Catalina Island and said she gets depressed seeing plastic cups floating by.

Davenport said, “Knowing how a lot of people have a disregard for the ocean, I think we’ll find a lot of trash.”

They pulled on their masks and neoprene hoods, slipped on their fins and walked backward through the waves. After floating out a little, they deflated their vests and descended, bubbles rising above them like silver umbrellas.

At first, they found only surf perch, streamlining in the tidal surge. Then they moved deeper, over undulating sand. In the troughs, coffee cup lids began to appear, swaying back and forth with the seaweed. Then some bags and foam cups.

With knives at the ready in case they became entangled in fishing line, the pair headed toward the pier. The landscape began to look more like a littered roadside, with lost fishing poles and lures and all the intentionally jettisoned waste of the pier-going public. They began to fill their mesh bags.

By 11 a.m., they were trudging out of the surf. A wave took Powell from behind, and she fell face first into the sand; Davenport emerged more smoothly.

“I think I found a bag of cocaine!” he said.

He dug through his bag and grabbed a plastic sack filled with about a pound of something.

“Oh, it’s sand,” he said.

They walked up the beach and dumped their trove on the tarp, where passersby lingered curiously.

“That’s why we put everything on the strand here,” said Thagard. “So people can come by and see what we’re doing. It’s all about education.”