ABOUT 1.5 MILES OFF HUNTINGTON BEACH – An old Canadian Coast Guard boat carrying eight experienced divers dropped anchor early on the Sunday before Christmas, 62 feet above what the divers say is a death trap.
A handful were suiting up to remove the danger: hundreds of pounds of fishing net snared on a sunken barge, probably cut loose by a commercial fishing boat after catching on the artificial reef. Lost nets "ghost fish" – catching and killing marine wildlife – making them a danger to fish, sea lions, diving birds, sharks, dolphins and even divers, experts say.
"These ecosystems support the food chains in the oceans. Without a healthy ecosystem, the fisheries can't thrive and the fish population can't thrive," said Kurt Lieber, the founder and director of Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA), a nonprofit that, through this trip and others, has removed 9.5 tons of derelict gear from Southern California's shores on major dives since the end of 2007.
There aren't any estimates of how much netting – a "perpetual killing machine," according to alliance volunteer Bethany Deck – is ensnaring marine wildlife in California. But Lieber says many tons of abandoned net are still out in the ocean, much of it unreported, which makes Ocean Defenders Alliance's effort a daunting task.
One of two dedicated net-removal groups in California, ODA has conducted trips to reefs and shipwrecks as far away as Catalina Island since 2004, using 144 volunteer divers who pay for their own equipment and compressed air.
UC Davis runs a similar net recovery operation, the California Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, which has recovered 60 tons of derelict nets and traps from the Channel Islands, Santa Barbara Channel and Los Angeles coast. It hires commercial divers to work on the sites it finds with state and federal funding.
ODA pays fuel, dock and food expenses with donated money and small grants from private sources like the Annenberg Foundation and the Patagonia clothing company, officials say.
The divers volunteer because they think it's important to "take care of our playground," said Dudley McLaughlin, the still photographer for this trip.
"It's important this stuff is cleaned up, if not for the benefit of fish and scuba divers then for the planet," McLaughlin said.
But beyond a few regions with dedicated net-recovery programs, there's little sense of how much derelict gear there is in the world, according to marine debris researchers and activists.
"Detection technologies are getting better and better every year but it's still really difficult to tell how much is out there, especially if it's on the bottom or out in the open ocean," said Dianna Parker, a spokesperson for NOAA's Debris Removal program.
Some hints come from places like the northwest Hawaiian Islands, where a NOAA program has pulled 753 metric tons of marine debris from the ocean since 1996. But there are few similar programs across the U.S. and funding is often directed elsewhere, like a cloud of debris created by the 2011 tsunami that's heading east across the Pacific, Parker said.
NOAA fishery biologist Lauren Saez has studied crab trap losses.
"After I met people like Kurt, I got to know there are people out there trying to make a pretty regular effort on gear removal, and that's really giving us a sense of how much is out there – a lot more than we thought there was," Saez said.
She said that the nets' longevity can mean that, even if fisherman lose relatively few nets each year, nets will accumulate dangerously over their 400-odd-year lifetimes.
One way of tackling the problem might come from tracking gear when it's lost. Los Angeles beach cleanup nonprofit Heal the Bay worked on two similar bills introduced to the state Senate that would have created a derelict fishing gear database through mandated reporting of lost gear. Passed in 2008 and 2010, the bills were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Saez said fishermen are happy to help.
"If they do lose gear, that's money out of their pocket, and they realize it's out there and it's going to keep fishing," she said.
But until a reporting system is put in place, keeping water free of nets is up to groups like ODA heading to sites that are reported by divers and sailors.
On its way from the Port of Los Angeles to one such site off Huntington Beach two weeks ago, the ODA's boat passed seven massive and motionless cargo ships, two oil rigs and a school of feeding dolphins that spent a minute or two speeding just beyond the boat's bow.
Gathered at the bow was most of the boat's volunteer crew: three divers certified for cave exploration, two to film and photograph the dive, two deckhands and Lieber, the skipper of the boat, the Clearwater.
The Clearwater came to rest over the sunken barge, right out to sea from the AES Huntington Beach Generating Station. Dive leader Eric Humphreys laid out the two dives the group planned to make over the next few hours.
But the divers resurfaced in 15 minutes, flummoxed. Visibility at the bottom was about 4 feet. They could barely see the gauges strapped to their arms, let alone the barge they blundered through the murk in search of.
Videographer Walter Marti couldn't see the sand he was floating on.
"I'm one who'll go hell or high water, I don't care. But this is even beyond that," he said.
After a second dive, the group called off the net removal. Ironically, the cloud of microscopic phytoplankton and silt stirred up by recent storms that scuttled this rehabilitation mission is probably what brought the school of dolphins to the area, a case of life stymieing a life-saving effort.
Everyone aboard the Clearwater that Sunday said they wanted to return to the barge again the following week. "We go to a site, work on it as long as we can, as hard as we can. We either move on because we're cleaned it all up or because the seas won't let us dive it anymore," Lieber said.
But the next Sunday it was the churned up seas that again kept the Clearwater in port and the net underwater, for now.
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