Report by ODA Advisory Board Member Marjorie Zensen

Last week, 14 ODA divers went aboard our partner Island Divers Hawaii’s vessel Sea Fox to a place we call Fish Camp.

This is only the second time we have been able to get out there in the last two years!

Conditions seldom allow the Sea Fox to venture to this spot!

Fish Camp has several spots that accumulate a lot of weights, line, and other fishing debris.  First, there is a ledge at about 45 ft and then again at the bottom at about 75 feet.

Check out that line-up on the wall.

You can see from these pictures that our divers are working hard… and it is work!

But with so many of us we filled up our two buckets in 17 minutes.

We’re working to train others so that we can deploy three, maybe four buckets next time.

Upon surfacing and hauling both buckets ‒ each at about 125 pounds ‒onto the Sea Fox we were treated to two humpback whales surfacing very near the area we had just cleaned up! We’re sure it was their thank-you and approval of our conservation work.

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To finish out the day we sorted through the debris and set aside what is usable to repurpose and reuse!  In all, we had about 1,000 yards of line, 100 yards of wire, a fishing line bell, 250 pounds of toxic lead weights, and an assortment of hooks including chandelier hooks.

Bucketloads of Gratitude

Mahalo, Matt Negaard for your captaining skills! And thank you to IDH’s Anna Sorrentino and Nick Cordrey for being our safety divers! Thanks, Bruce Gordon, for crewing for us. 

Photographers were Ken Staples, Walker Embrey, Anna Sorrentino, and me (Marjorie).

Divers for the day were Jason Cohen, Michael Del Pra, Walker Embrey, Mark England, , Andrea Fiegle, Crystal Gray, Jim Hayden, Karen and Terry Hodder, David Marcelli, Glenn Roberts, Ed Sisino, James Vaughn, and me (Marjorie).

We look forward to returning to Fish Camp to perform our ongoing, ocean-cleaning services to our clients the salty ones!

If you’d like to ensure we have the fuel and operational support to deploy our debris-removal teams again here or in any of the coastal waters where we work, your contribution will be received with thanks and put to good use!