
Sunday morning dawned cloudy with a hint of rain, but that made no difference for the more than 50 eager volunteers who gathered at the Edmonds Marina S and T docks for what has become a semi-annual tradition – diving under the boat moorages to clean up several years of accumulated debris, most of which was either mistakenly dropped or discarded from boats moored in the Marina’s slips.
“Rain? Pfft!” scoffed one diver. “We’re mostly underwater anyway!”
“We’ve been doing this for gosh – 10 or 12 years,” said Annie Crawley, who leads the all-volunteer youth dive team. Crawley is an internationally known ocean advocate, underwater photographer, educator, youth organizer and tireless advocate for the oceans’ environmental health. She and her crew of volunteers see this as much more than just a cleanup, but a part of their larger shared mission to raise awareness of marine environmental issues.
And while cleaning up the marina’s underwater environment is the immediate goal, Crawley sees these regular events as a vehicle to raise public awareness of the ocean, its importance to all life on this planet, and the pressing need to protect and preserve it.
“We’re hoping that by bringing all this garbage to the surface, we can prompt people to notice, think about and hopefully act on the larger issue of maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem,” she said. “This trash is a great visual representation of what’s happening below the sea. It’s easy to fall into the mindset that when something falls into the water it just sinks and goes away. But there is no ‘away.’ The ocean is so important to our lives – the ocean would be fine without us, but people won’t be fine without a healthy ocean.”
These cleanups by Crawley and her dive team also reflect the strong environmental stance of the Port of Edmonds, which has made these events an official part of its long-term environmental plan. Port Commissioners Janelle Cass and David Preston were on hand to lend their support and thank Crawley and all the volunteers for their efforts.
“We’re always looking for new volunteers to help out,” added Crawley. “You don’t have be a diver to be part of this – there’s plenty of opportunity for anyone with an interest and passion for protecting and preserving our world ocean.”
Learn more about Annie Crawley and how you can join her team at the Our Ocean and You website.
— Story and photos by Larry Vogel
Wonderful work and cause! I raised an eyebrow when I saw that a “fairly new” laptop was found underwater.
Where does all the collected Marina garbage go? To the regular landfill?
Maybe they should take color pictures of the garbage, enlarge them & post them at the gates boat owners use to access the docks as visual examples. And a message: PLEASE TAKE CARE OF OUR OCEANS, for example. Sure, sometimes something is dropped accidentally but even so, reminders could create more awareness.. Bless the volunteers.
Good job everyone. Thank you, thank you.