Cleaning up Sea Otter Cove

By Will Soltau

“Hey Will, there’s a Japanese skiff washed ashore near Cape Palmerston!” That was what my friend Mike called to tell me last March.

“I know.” I said, “I spotted it in January of 2013. It’s pretty beat up.”

“No,” Mike replied, “this is another one and it’s in good shape. We could salvage it!” And so we did.

I blogged about the salvage adventure last June and vowed in that blog to return to Sea Otter Cove for a shoreline cleanup. Sea Otter is a small, shallow cove on the west side of Vancouver Island in Cape Scott Provincial Park. There are a few rough trails to outside beaches from the cove but it is accessible only by water. Rich with wildlife because of its high-value habitat, it is aimed at the open Pacific like a catcher’s mitt so it also collects a substantial amount of marine debris.

We began planning the project and started fundraising. Two week’s worth of food and accommodations would be needed for the team of volunteers and a large skiff to transport them and what they collected from the debris strewn beaches.

Removing the collected debris from the cove would require a landing craft and helicopter.

It would take a huge effort on the part of the volunteers to clean the cove and surrounding areas and a considerable amount of money to do it safely. Funding for the project came from the generous contribution from the Government of Japan and its people. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Environment, the Vancouver Aquarium, the BC Parks’ Enhancement Fund and all those individuals and local businesses who donated food, supplies, equipment and time as well as all the individual donors who believe in us and what we do.

Two weeks of cleanup work netted over 2,600 kilograms of debris from Sea Otter Cove and the surrounding beaches. Only 41 percent went to landfill with the rest being either recycled or repurposed.

I would humbly like to think we made a difference for the better because I’m pretty sure no one has ever tried to tackle a remote cleanup on this scale since plastic was invented - at least not before at Sea Otter Cove. Still, even while we were there, I watched new debris objects washing in with every rising tide. Knowing that the consumption of plastic and the amount of plastic waste is increasing every year, I’m left wondering if what we did was nothing more than a drop in the ocean and how soon we might have to return to Sea Otter Cove to do it all over again.

Once everyone was home safe and sound and the debris responsibly disposed of, I felt relieved. I checked my voice-mailbox. There was a message from Mike. “Hey Will, there’s a Japanese skiff washed up at the bottom of the Hecht Beach trail. It’s pretty trashed. Not really salvageable but thought you might be interested.”