6th Annual Operation Clean Sweep

Bicycles, fishing gear, engines, and even a small boat. All of these items sound as if a swap meet was in town but in fact these are just some of the items scraped up from the bottom of the seafloor at the Santa Barbara Harbor.

About 40 volunteers plunged into the harbor waters to remove trash and heavy junk left by humans. “We usually average about three thousand pounds a year,” says Mick Kronman, Harbor Operations Manager. “It’s always different every year but it’s always just kind of a crazy mix of stuff.” Volunteer divers never quite know what they will encounter at the bottom of the sea.

Many of the items found on the seafloor were accidentally dropped, but there is other trash that was purposely thrown into harbor waters, and Harbor officials urge people to be conscientious of the harm done to the organisms that live here by dumping garbage into the sea. At times one can even see seals playfully swimming in the area.

Some of the volunteers return year after year to offer their services to this environmental cause, and as Kronman puts it, “I think they get the satisfaction out of knowing they are doing something good for the environment, and knowing they are doing something good to clean up the Santa Barbara Harbor.”