Miles offshore, a California island becomes a 'catcher's mitt' for trash

May 10-Getting to the rocky, cliff-backed stretch of beach along Chinese Harbor on Santa Cruz Island in Channel Islands National Park requires a roughly 90-minute boat ride, then a short kayak through the Pacific Ocean to shore, since there's no landing dock for larger boats.

The closest Starbucks is at least 25 miles across the Santa Barbara Channel, maybe in downtown Ventura. Still, the nearly indestructible plastic cups emblazoned with the coffee giant's logo regularly wash ashore here, along with myriad other trash artifacts from the mainland. On any given day, the sand catches plastic water bottles, plastic utensils and, for some reason, a lot of tennis balls.

After heavy rain, stormwater drains usher water directly from urban environments out to the ocean, often picking up trash and debris along the way. That trash then ends up in the ocean, where currents carry it outward - and the wide, remote beaches of Channel Islands National Park can serve as a "catcher's mitt" for some of this trash, snaring it before it's carried out farther into the ocean. What the islands miss could end up at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, according to Molly Troup, the science and program manager for Santa Barbara Channelkeeper.

For the past several years, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper has hosted cleanup events on these rarely visited stretches of beaches twice a year, in partnership with the Island Packers, the Santa Barbara Adventure Company, the Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program, and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. (The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary protects 1,470 square miles of ocean around the northern Channel Islands.)

"Most of the marine debris that we find is coming from the mainland in some form or fashion," said Ted Morton, the executive director of Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, citing examples of finding trash from McDonald's and a trash can carried into the ocean all the way from Ojai.

"It's polluting a very sensitive place, and it's also trash that can have an impact on wildlife," Morton continued. "And it takes an effort to visit these beaches. They don't get a lot of public visitation. So if the trash is sort of left to just be there, it pollutes the beach and will just exacerbate the problems."

Trash did feel relatively scarce on the extremely rocky beach along Chinese Harbor on Monday - volunteers fanned out across the coastline, sifting through driftwood and seaweed for the possibility of finding small pieces of plastic or other trash. (I found one plastic coffee cup lid for my efforts.) Several Starbucks cups were picked up yet again, along with deflated Mylar balloons (including a blue "Happy Birthday" balloon covered with smiling yellow emoji faces) and large hunks of sheet metal. Volunteers also hauled out a large forgotten lobster trap, a common cleanup item along the beach, according to Troup.

Monday's cleanup "seemed like a lot less than we have been getting," said Troup, but the groups did just visit the same beach in September and haul out hundreds of pounds of trash. When all was said and done, the total weight of trash collected on Monday was 775 pounds, weighed down by the lobster traps and metal. And as long as we all keep using single-use plastics, they're likely going to make their way out into the ocean. (Although, maybe the state's single-use plastic bag ban will make a small dent.)

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.