Pretty instantly I was elected to the executive committee of the Surfrider Foundation, Ventura Chapter, I was the youngest person in the room and I was all for it.
Andrew Fish has been an active contributor to Surfrider chapters in California and Massachusetts for years, and recently set sail to help figure out a way to make our ocean a bit more hospitable (cleaner) for all of us. He boarded a sailboat in the Canary Islands to gather data on plastic pollution in the ocean’s gyres. He answered a few questions for us before his journey, and stay tuned for an update from the trip.
Katie Willis Morton: Tell me about your trip!
Andrew Fish: In short, it’s an expedition across the Atlantic, approximately 2,800 nautical miles from the Canary Islands to Martinique in the Caribbean. At least once per day we will be towing a tool called the “Travel Trawl” to sample for plastic particles in the ocean. We will slow the boat, drop the trawl, and drag it for an hour or more to collect the samples. Depending on wind conditions, I expect to take 20-30 samples along the journey. With each sample I will note the location, boat speed, direction, wind conditions, and store them in jars until the samples can be analyzed after the trip. From what I’ve been told, I can expect to find a shocking amount plastic in each sample, even though I’ll be hundreds, if not thousands of miles from any land.
KWM: What is your background and history with Surfrider?
Within a few days of receiving my college diploma—in land-locked, Colorado— I packed up my belongings and headed west to Ventura, CA to manage a surf school there. Each day, our surf camps started with a beach cleanup and the kids would fill 1-3 trash bags on just a short stretch of sand. It isn’t until you start picking trash up off the beach that you realize how much crap is really out there; that’s when I really tuned in. I soon attended my first Surfrider meeting at the Ventura Public Library, which happened to be a celebration for the Surfrider Foundation’s 20th anniversary. I’ll never forget it, Glen Henning, one of Surfrider’s founders giving a presentation about the beginnings of the organization. I was the youngest person in the room so when they mentioned an election was coming up for a seat on the executive committee of the chapter, I was all for it. Pretty instantly I was elected to the executive committee of the Surfrider Foundation, Ventura Chapter. I didn’t know what I signed up for, but that seems to be how I do things (this boat trip is no exception, I don’t even know how to sail!)
So there I was, sun burnt and barely out of college sitting on the executive committee of a Surfrider chapter with an environmental engineer, a mathematician, a school teacher, and world-renowned environmentalist. Though I felt like a fish out of water, it was amazing way to start my relationship with the Surfrider Foundation.
The environmental issues in Ventura at that time were complicated and ran deep within the local community. For so many years they had been dealing with local and state governments on the same two projects, a beach restoration project at Surfer’s Point, and the removal of Matilija Dam.
My experience in Ventura taught me that while working on the environmental crisis can be a daunting and time consuming mission, it can also be creative and fun. The Surfer’s Point project is an example of this, for after 15 years of Surfrider efforts, the project finally broke ground in July, 2011. Still, we are hoping to see the removal of Matilija Dam.
KWM: What has inspired you to take this trip?
AF: Plastic – and specifically – plastic pollution is a topic I’m connected to both personally and professionally. That, as well as my love of surfing and the ocean inspired me to take this trip. I see this as a chance for all those interests to come together. Hopefully the data I will be gathering will have a positive impact on solving the problems of single-use plastics pollution that is killing the oceans.
For Surfrider’s local Massachusetts chapter, plastic has been a big topic in 2011. We’ve had to pick up 8 million plastic discs after a New Hampshire sewage plant overflowed and are always working to update the Bottle Bill to include a deposit on all plastic bottles, not just a few select ones.
On the discs, I attended organized cleanups with Surfrider, but also picked them up – by the hundreds – on my own before/after surf sessions from Maine to Rhode Island. I’ll never forget how shocked I was to find them on Martha’s Vineyard this summer, more than 4 months after the spill. The only positive thing about the discs is that without them covering our shores, we never would have heard about the thousands of tons of sewage the came from plant with the discs.
Now the Bottle Bill, this is Surfrider’s biggest campaign here in Massachusetts. Our chapter is a coalition member alongside MASSPIRG, The Massachusetts Sierra Club, and a list of about 45 other groups that are in favor of the expansion. To us, it just doesn’t make any sense that a Coke bottle is worth 5 cents but a Vitamin Water bottle isn’t. They are the same bottle, same material, and the only difference is that Vitamin Water doesn’t fit into a beverage category that existed when the Bottle Bill was created in 1983. It’s actually quite simple, the bill needs to be modernized, which will drastically increase recycling rates of single use plastic bottles.
