Nine people including the park ranger participated in this event that collected 2500 lbs of debris. Two trucks and one ATV ferried participants 6 miles from Cape Lookout Campground to the tip of Netarts Spit. The cleanup crew consisted of Pete Snell (Event Host), Ryan Parker (Park Ranger), Garry Link (Pacific City resident and expert beach driver), Shannon, Bronson, Audrey, and Tony Gaine (Awesome family that walked about 4 miles of beach digging and collecting heavy debris), John Morris (dedicated beach rover from Nehalem), Leo Newberg (Newport Chapter Chair and expert dead lifter), and Vince Pappalardo (Newport Chapter Volunteer Coordinator).
This group collected debris from 10am to 2pm focusing in two groups starting at the tip of the Spit. One group went around the spit into the bay to collect rope balls, nets, and fishing tubs. The other group went south from the Spit digging up and cashing groups of large debris while walking south. About 6 miles in total were covered. Debris mainly consisted of rope, nets, tubs/baskets/containers, commercial fishing floats, dock floats, large plastic debris from car parts to boat parts. Very little was household debris except for plastic water/drink bottles half of which were not from the US. An estimated 2500lbs of debris was collected (1500 lbs was retrieved off the beach and 1000 lbs was cashed on the beach for the park rangers to remove soon as the tides we getting higher and the 4 hours spent collecting was a strenuous 4 hours).
Here is a
link to the complete photo album. Of special note was a 300 lb rope ball that took about an hour to cut and dig up and still was only able to retrieve about 80% of it, a 300 lb large 4ft x 4ft commercial fishing tote, about 15 fishing floats of various types, and crates and tubs of various sizes that were buried in the sand that needed to be dug up. This was a very successful event and went a long way to getting major debris off the beach before they became little bits of plastic. The Newport chapter thanks all that were involved.
