Tuesday February 21, 2023
Santa Cruz Sentinel —
Nine atmospheric rivers hit California from Dec. 27 to Jan. 16, with an average of 12 inches of rainfall, including nearly 40 inches in Santa Cruz. Almost half of the rainfall on the Central Coast entered Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) through rivers and streams, carrying with it millions of tons of natural and human-made debris.
Human debris comes in many forms, much of it consisting of lightweight and mass-produced plastic products used by Californians every day.
Perhaps you have seen plastic bags and bottles, food wrappers, cigarette butts, and straws in our rivers and creeks or clogging storm drains after a rainfall. This debris is not only seen on land and on our beaches. Sanctuary scientists, while conducting scuba and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) research, have observed a myriad of ocean debris from the surface down to depths of 10,000 feet — bottles, buckets, derelict fishing gear, a shipping container, 100-year-old china, a wheelchair and even a washing machine.