by Fritz Hayes

April 27th, 2003

Despite some doubts because of the stormy weather on the Saturday before our big clean-up trip we tried to remain hopeful. Sunday morning the weather was better but we anticipated the visibility might still be poor since the wind and surge would still have things pretty stirred up. But as the 'team' amassed in my driveway the determination mounted and we agreed we had to go for it!

When we arrived at Quiescence, Paul Caputo already had the boat arrangements made and air tanks ready to go. Capt. Scott Fowler was ready with a prepared list of places recommended by local park officials for our choosing. We wanted to go somewhere we don't normally dive because every dive for us is a reef clean up and our 'normal' destinations stay pretty neat.

Our team consisted of Capt. Scott, Divers Lazaro Ruda, Karen Avila, Juliana Freitas, Richardo Gotthilf, myself and snorkeler Josh Avila (Karen's son who is in the process of getting certified)

We headed out into choppy seas with more enthusiasm than trepidation. On the way out we made the decision to go to an inside reef area called White Banks where a lot of fishing occurs. We went over the dive plans on the boat and discussed the parameters for removing debris and lines. We discussed when it's best to only snip to unbind and when and how to leave items if it appeared removing them would injure more than help.

We were a bit delayed as we made a couple stops and circles to pick up floating debris along the way. With all that was floating we started to wonder if we'd actually get to the submerged reef debris.

White Banks was a mother lode of monofilament, lead and hooks. We did find some larger debris and had to cut a net chum bag off some coral as it had begun to smother it.

We did encounter pretty bad visibility and it forced us to stay more closely packed than we would normally. We somewhat resembled a gang of blue tangs raiding the reef and the Sergeant Major nesting grounds. We likewise had to fend off the protective attacks of vicious and aggressive damselfishes. Thank goodness for dive buddies riding shotgun.

It's amazing the amount of time it takes to work monofilament line and hooks off the reef. We spent two dives painstakingly cutting, snipping and sliding line and lead so as not to cause further damage

Josh was a big help ferrying some debris back to the boat via snorkel so we could keep working. By the end of the trip we also came to the stinging conclusion that fishing line is somehow magnetically attracted to fire coral and in a circular convoluted fashion.

Although disappointed the trip had to come to a close when there was more work that could be done, we were pretty excited about what we had done. We ended up with a trash can full of line, hooks, lead, netting and debris.

Then, like all divers we moved on to the next important order of business; pick a restaurant. This time it was off to Hobo's to eat, relax, converse and begin discussing future dive plans before heading home.

We would like to thank The Ocean Conservancy, Quiescence and Capt. Scott for putting together this Reef Clean Up program. It really demonstrated the continued need to practice good stewardship of such an important resource, our Ocean and the life systems it contains and supports.

Fritz

Side note from Laz:
Special thanks to Fritz for organizing this fantastic trip and for writing this superb article on the Reef Clean Up. If you enjoyed this article, please write a quick note to Fritz and let him know how much you appreciated it so we can inspire him to write other great articles. Your comments are great inspiration!

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