April 2022 E-Letter

In this E-Letter:

It’s A Momentous Earth Day!
HTO & EF Santa Barbara, San Francisco & San Diego Join Hands in Giant Earth Day Beach Cleanup
Next Steps for Summerland Oil
HTO Puts “Fast Response” Vehicle in Service
The Madness of Microplastics
A Salute to HTO’s New Dog Bag Dispenser Sponsors
Harbor Operation Clean Sweep is May 7, 2022!

It's a Momentous Earth Day!

The Clean Water Act is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year – a significant milestone and a great salute to the 2022 Earth Day. From all of us at Heal the Ocean, we wish you a Good Earth Day! We hope you get the chance to get outside and do a little something – anything – to give back to Nature. Whether you plant a garden, refresh your recycling skills, take up composting, lead a beach cleanup, pick up trash in your neighborhood, reduce your water usage, or buy second-hand items, there are countless ways to do something good for Earth, and HTO hopes you will consider doing something good for Earth EVERY DAY.

EF International San Francisco and San Diego Campuses Join EF Santa Barbara & HTO for a Giant Earth Day Beach Cleanup!

EF International Language School, Santa Barbara, has joined hands withHTO for the fifth time to celebrate Earth Day in a massive coastal cleanup scheduled for April 22, 2022 – Earth Day!

The EF/HTO model has gone statewide…EF San Diego and EF San Francisco will be joining in a Heal the Ocean sponsored beach cleanup at their respective campuses. So, on Earth Day, hundreds of EF students around California will be hitting the beaches – wearing HTO T-shirts – to rid their respective coastlines of trash.

We thank EF Santa Barbara Academic Director Paul Sanchez, for helping organize and coordinate the statewide beach cleanup at all of the California EF Campuses. The goal of the event is to have students engage in environmental stewardship here in Santa Barbara, with hopes that when their term is over they will bring that passion for environmentalism home with them. Heal the Ocean’s Alison Thompson provided a lecture and education materials to present to the students a few days before their cleanup.

Moving Ahead on Summerland Oil Cleanup

**Graphic from On the Wave Production's report to the California State Lands Commission**

Heal the Ocean’s Field Advisor Harry Rabin has been working with the California State Lands Commission’s InterAct/Claxon engineers to locate the next Summerland Oil wellheads to cap. Up next on the list are Treadwell #1 and Treadwell #5, two wells aligned on the same Treadwell pier as #10, capped in 2020. Work on upcoming wells is estimated to start in July 2022. HTO is lobbying the State Lands Commission to go after additional funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s New Orphaned Well Program which aims to help the State plug orphaned oil and gas wells. Additional money, added to SB44 funding, would speed up the process of capping the leaking wells of Summerland.

HTO "Fast Response" Vehicle Goes to Work!

HTO Field Advisor Harry Rabin has been working hand in hand with California State Lands engineers plotting out the next wells to be capped at Summerland Beach. Harry works with a lot of sophisticated high-tech equipment, including drones, which he’s loaded up in his personal “Fast Response Vehicle” which is ready to go at a moment’s notice, and which Harry also uses for HTO Homeless Surveys, and to track Derelict Boats that may hit the beach.

The Madness of Microplastics

Unfortunately, those fuzzy blankets and jackets we all love to snuggle in are not so snuggly-fuzzy for the environment. They are, in fact, terrible once they shed their microplastic fibers into the ocean environment via the home washing machine. Microplastics are filling up the stomachs of fish and sea birds, but they are also now in human blood.

On California Ocean Day, March 29, 2022, HTO staff Sydni Trigueiro & Alison Thompson tuned in to a panel discussion held by the California State University (CSU) Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology Microplastic Panel. Among the things they learned:

Microplastics take a variety of forms and are present as fibers in synthetic materials like fleeces, blankets, and other fabrics composed of nylon or polyester;
Microfibers are shed by tires on the road;
They come from the breaking down of plastic materials;
They lead to entanglements, internal lacerations, and cellular toxicity in sea animals;
Humans eat, drink and breathe microplastic daily.

Solutions being considered to combat this problem include SB 54- Packaging of Products – a bill aiming to reduce the amount of single use plastic materials and, as HTO has reported before, using filtering bags (such as the Guppy Friend Washing Bag sold by Patagonia) in your washing machine, which filter microfibers from your clothes as they go through the wash cycle.

HTO Salutes our New
Dog Bag Dispenser Program Sponsors!

Heal the Ocean’s Dog Bag program continues to grow! We are thrilled to welcome three new sponsors to the program – Coastal Byproducts; Tom & Ami Kearns and their dog Emma; and Branden & Valerie Aroyan, and their dog Lucky! Coastal Byproducts is a local, family-owned and operated, earth-friendly business, specializing in the free recycling of grease and cooking oil from restaurants and other locations that generate such waste. Coastal Byproducts is sponsoring three dispensers through the City of Santa Barbara Parks and Recreation Department: MacKenzie Dog Park, Willowglen, and Sheffield Open Space. Tom & Ami Kearns and their dog Emma are sponsoring their favorite local City park, Honda Valley Open Space. Branden & Valerie Aroyan and their beach-dog Lucky are sponsoring a dispenser for the County of Santa Barbara at the end of Hammond’s Trail in Montecito. Heal the Ocean thanks these new participants, as well as ALL our sponsors, whose support has made it possible for us to send much-needed funds to the County & City to buy dog bags. Thank you, all!

Volunteer at Operation Clean Sweep in the Santa Barbara Harbor on May 7

Calling all divers and ocean lovers, grab your gear and head down to the Santa Barbara Harbor at 8 AM on Saturday, May 7th, to help with Operation Clean Sweep -- the annual volunteer seafloor cleanup in the SB Harbor!

Every year, people lose phones, chairs, barbeques, fishing poles, and even the occasional refrigerator, in the harbor, and all this material collects on the bottom. At Operation Clean Sweep, volunteer divers and dock workers remove the junk from beneath Marina 1.
Operation Clean Sweep begins at 8 AM with a briefing on the Travel Lift Pier. There will be donuts and coffee. The event concludes around 11:30 AM with a box lunch.

For more information or to volunteer please contact Chris Bell at: 805-897-1962 or cbell@santabarbaraca.gov