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News and Media

News and Media

By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

The end of lobster hunting season is always a special day for us ocean lovers.  March 25th was the last day of 2015 that traps could legally be in the water.  So, we got the boat loaded with divers and crew on Sunday, the 29th (our first opportunity!) and start removing abandoned traps.

Divers: Al Laubenstein, Jeff Connor, and Bob Walls took our underwater scooters and traveled along the LA Harbor breakwall.  On deck were Kim Cardenas, Jim Lieber, Dave Merrill, and I.  

Ocean Defenders Alliance Dive & Boat Crew volunteer teamOcean Defenders Alliance Dive Crew ready to dive on debris!

Our divers (your divers!) found three traps, two of which were brand new-holding a total of 18 animals.  Three were lobsters, and 15 were huge sheep crabs, with roughly half of the crabs being egg bearing females.  We set them all free, and got the traps onto the LegaSea using the hoist on the bow.

I can't tell you how great it is to have that hoist.  It saves the deck crew from having to haul up multiple 70-100 pound traps, AND we don't have to protect ourselves from the sharp edges of the traps as we handle them.  The hoist simply hauls them up, and just drops them onto the deck. We hardly have to touch them now! Check us out, getting more efficient for the oceans. ;-)

Using the hoist donated by Bob BarkerThe hoist does the work haulingup debris!Marine debris is easier to haul out with a hoist!

While we were on the site two whales swam by, a pod of about 30 dolphins passed within 50 feet of us, and we spotted a stellar sea lion! We were all working on the trap retrieval, so we didn't get pictures of these beautiful friends of ours. Next time!

How about some happy RELEASE pictures instead?!

ODA releases crabs that were stuck in lobster trapODA volunteer Dave Merrill releases a lobster to freedom!

It was a "stellar" day to be out on the water, made all the more enjoyable by knowing that we saved 18 animals-and eventually MANY more-from suffering a slow death in those traps!

Thank you for helping us make this happen!

Let's partner on some more of this ocean cleaning and animal freeing! Your gift makes you part of this!