Crews Go Coastal and Really Clean Up

Jason Dante passed up a chance to catch a lobster. He bagged a corroded car battery instead, lugging it ashore in his net.

Another scuba diver snagged what appeared to be a Santeria offering tossed with a prayer, or a curse, into the ocean: a sealed bottle with a brownish mixture of seeds and a photograph of a man, ripped in half. Others pulled tangles of fishing gear, plastic bags, Frisbees, cans, bottles, dingy socks, plastic six-pack holders and a surprising number of panties.

This was the haul of 31 divers who fished for trash in the murky waters around Santa Monica Pier as part of International Coastal Cleanup Day. Hundreds of others slipped beneath the waves at Redondo Beach, various points in Orange County, Monterey and elsewhere.

Thousands more scoured the beaches along California’s coastline, an estimated 40,000 people, in fact. Collectively, they picked up about 600,000 pounds of trash and 80,000 pounds of recyclable bottles and cans.

Sponsors at the California Coastal Commission briefly toyed with the idea of postponing the 17th annual cleanup day because of last week’s terrorist tragedies. They quickly relented when shouted down by a chorus of volunteers.

“I’ve been so excited. I’ve been waiting for this all week,” gushed 14-year-old Rachel Kim, one of 100 students from Immaculate Heart High School who picked up mostly cigarette butts. Just about every other activity, she said, was canceled, leaving her and her friends with nothing to do.

Carl Morehouse, a Ventura councilman, saw the cleanup as a gesture of support for the nation.

“It’s one thing to drive around and wave your flag or your fist and say you’re gung-ho America,” Morehouse said. “But it’s another to actually be out here doing something.”

Still, the nation’s nervousness seemed to follow the masses to the beach.

Suspicious Canister Prompts Evacuation

After a canister of phosphorous marked “flammable” was found in a tidal marsh in Huntington Beach, an Orange County sheriff’s bomb squad swooped in and 140 people were evacuated. A message on the canister read: “If found, contact police or military.”

Mostly, though, the day unfolded uneventfully. Cleanup volunteers weren’t frightened, but rather “grossed out” by what they found, as Ventura teenager Craig Rose put it.

“I’ve picked up over 160 cigarette butts so far,” he said. “And that’s just been in the past hour. Disgusting.”

Los Angeles County volunteers seem to weigh in each year with the most trash. This year, 6,829 volunteers scoured beaches, creeks and estuaries, removing 44,240 pounds of garbage and 3,964 pounds of recyclables. The biggest items were 2 1/2 cars pulled from the banks of Malibu Creek.

The county’s volunteer effort fudges a bit--by lowering street sweepers into Ballona Creek to vacuum up huge amounts of trash.

“Hey, the drivers volunteer their time, so why shouldn’t we count it?” said Mark Gold, director of Heal the Bay.

Ballona Creek is the largest source of trash that flows into Santa Monica Bay, along with urban runoff from other sources, officials say.

This week, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board will consider a plan to stop the flow of trash into the creek, similar to one it adopted earlier this year for the Los Angeles River. These are the first plans in the nation, under the Clean Water Act, to set a goal of zero tolerance for trash.

It these proposals actually work and spread to other areas, they could eliminate much of the need for annual coastal cleanup days, officials say.

Meantime, the beaches seem to be able to use all of the help they can get.

About 500 volunteers flocked to Laguna Beach, including members of Lake Forest’s Brownie Troop 2082.

Sarah Godfrey, an 8-year-old from the troop, filled her bag with discarded candle wax, a reminder of a candlelight vigil held in memory of the victims of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.

Caitlin Dowdall, 14, of Laguna Beach said she found “some pretty weird stuff.”

“I found part of a pot that was really heavy, a lot of beer bottles and a lot of cigarette butts; it was gross,” said Caitlin, who decided to get involved after hearing an announcement at her high school. “I really didn’t think there would be that much stuff.”

Over the years, it has become quite a sport among the divers organized by Scubahaus to hunt for a special kind of weird stuff tossed off Santa Monica Pier: handguns.

“If you find objects that are dangerous, don’t bring them up,” dive master Frank DiCrisi warned the divers on the beach. “We are talking about guns and knives. We would prefer that you not put a gun in your bag. Just tell us where it is, and we will get it.”

With those words, the veteran divers wearing tanks and flippers swaggered--well, waddled, actually--into the surf in a race to see who could discover what has eluded Santa Monica police: weapons ditched in the sea.

This year, unlike previous ones, the crew didn’t turn up a single gun or ammo clip. Divers managed to find plenty of other items to stuff into their mesh bags, however, despite extraordinarily poor visibility.

Diver Hauls Auto Battery Ashore

Descending into such murky waters is an act of faith. Although cautious divers always pair up with a buddy, the water was so clouded by swirling sand and sediment that a dive buddy disappeared behind a curtain of haze just a few feet away.

Using a light, Jason Dante methodically worked his way across the ocean floor, stuffing a seemingly endless stream of plastic bags, underwear, balloons and other junk into the mesh bag attached to his vest.

He maneuvered more by feel than by sight, trying not to let the ocean’s surge slam him against the pier’s pilings. Then he came upon an automobile battery. He managed to stuff it into his bag and spent the next 45 minutes lugging it back to shore--like a ball and chain, dragging him to the bottom.

“I couldn’t just leave it there,” he said. “People don’t understand that the ocean isn’t a trash can.”

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Times staff writer Tina Dirmann contributed to this story.