We have cleaned over 1500
miles of shoreline now
Basically it comes down
to just human muscle, I mean, we use
chainsaws and knives.
You find stuff from like
Russia and China and Korea and Vietman, Malaysia
It really doesn't matter where it comes from, like we all just have to clean it up
Our goal right now in the next ten
or eleven days before the end of this year is just to
see how much we can collect before we get to remove it
What you see on the beach is a fraction of what's out there
You can pretty much break it down into three or four things
Water bottles - lot of water bottles. Styrofoam,
fishing nets, fishing buoys. And that's
99% of what you find on the beach
Basically you just go along with chainsaws
and muscle, and get the garbage, put it in sacks
and then from there we haul it up above the log jam
so it's out of any heavy surf or winter storms if it's going to stay there for the year
and put it in super sacks
so yeah, we just progressively work down the coast, just day in and day out
We have daily goals for ourselves, like if we're working at a pretty good rate
we like to keep on pace with about, I don't know, about twenty
to twenty-five supersacks a day
So this is pile 102, and in this pile right now we have two supersacks
and one set of buoys.
June 23rd here, this is what we've done today, we're up to
twenty-five supersacks on the day, and I think for now we'll call it and just keep
cleaning until tomorrow
My name is Hana, and I represent a
organization in Japan called Japan Environmental Action Network
With over about twenty people working together to clean up the beach
this is amazing. Like we all need to work together to clean up
the beach as much as possible. So like
every time I go back to Japan, I talk to the fishermen
and the fishermen are like - it's a joke - but they're like, "if you find any buoy
with my logo, you got to bring it back"
and so I'm always looking out for that stuff
The crew's awesome, I mean we're all skiiers
or snowboarders, we're all friends, I mean, we're all good friends.
My dad started it
he's the man behind the desk, he makes the ball roll for sure
He works hard
he doesn't give up easy, which is good
This stuff is uplifted quite a ways during the earthquake
Well, I think my bag's about full already
Yep
I'm going to take a quick look back in here and see what else is back here
The thing about marine debris is it's
kind of a hidden problem. Unless you're out there, especially on these remote beaches
that are so heavily impacted, people don't see it
I remember probably a good twenty years ago
I was out on the outside of Montague Island, flew out there
and I was just utterly astounded by all the garbage out there
You walk out there and you wade through this stuff and you go, this isn't right, this shouldn't happen
I think a lot of it's just awareness, I mean
I've been boating out here for a long time, and I wasn't even aware of how extensive
the marine debris problem is out here
but, it's a consumer world out there for sure
I mean, I don't know where people's values
are I guess, but mine is, you got to have a little bit of respect
for the environment, considering we live in it
Especially in Alaska. I mean, a lot of people like the outdoors and like to be part of the
outdoors, that's why they live here, and they don't necessarily want to see it trashed.