Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

Beach Clean-up Guide

May 10, 2020 by Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

Fresh air and clean beaches are good for all of us. So why not do a beach clean-up!

Runoff from the land picks up trash and other pollutants and flows down storm drains and straight to the Channel. Unlike sewage, this polluted runoff is not filtered and treated before it hits the ocean. The trash that gets transported to the ocean can be mistaken as food by wildlife or entangle animals. Help keep wildlife safe by picking up trash before it can cause harm.

Volunteer clean-up efforts play an important role keeping our beaches clean. While our local beaches may appear relatively clean due to routine beach grooming, microplastics are plentiful. These tiny plastic particles not only harm wildlife, they can be consumed by fish and enter the food chain, posing a threat to human health. So be on the lookout for tiny plastic bits!

Here are some helpful instructions on how to do a clean-up AND contribute to Channelkeeper’s ever-growing database of trash collected from local beaches—data that we use to help inform policy-making. Follow these simple instructions to get outside and make a difference in your community.

Gather supplies before you go. Coat up with sunscreen and grab a reusable bucket or bag, a durable pair of gloves, and your trusty water bottle and head outside.
Download our Clean-up Data Sheet. Print out our Data Card and bring it (and a pencil) along with you. We recommend filling out the data card as you go. Please also note that not every item you find on the beach will be on the data card. Some items of particular interest include cigarette filters, micro-pieces of foam and plastic, and balloons.
Beach Clean-up. Pick up any litter you see on the beach and stay safe while out. Do not pick up sharp items. If you feel unsafe picking up an item, please leave it where you found it. While it’s rare to find medical waste such as needles, these are occasionally found, and broken glass is prevalent. These should not be picked up by volunteers.
Get help for injured critters. If you see a dead or injured bird, please don’t pick it up. Notify Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network at 805.966.9005. If it’s a dead or sick marine mammal, please contact Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute at 805.567.1505 and leave a message with as much info as possible about the animal and its location.
Share the fun! Don’t forget to post your clean-up pics and results on social media using the hashtag #SBChannelkeeper and tagging us @SBChannelkeeper. We can’t wait to see your trash treasures and give you some well-deserved kudos for volunteering to protect the outdoor places we all love.

Enrichment:
Learn the facts about plastic pollution and checkout ten tips on how to reduce plastic with your family

What are the top trash items found by volunteers at beach clean-ups around the world? Guess and then find the answer the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Clean-up Report 2019.

Become a part of a thriving community interested in reducing waste from single-use plastic products and packaging and show your support for plastic reduction policies by signing this p etition urging Congress to hold plastic producers accountable.

Environmental Actions You Can Take While Social Distancing

April 2, 2020 by Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

[En Español]

The Santa Barbara Channelkeeper team sincerely hopes you are healthy and safe in the face of this unprecedented moment in our history. As our community navigates these uncertain times, Channelkeeper is continuing our work to protect the health of our environment and our community by advocating for clean water, combatting pollution, monitoring water quality, and advancing climate-smart water supply strategies for the South Coast—all while practicing social distancing. And you can too.

The weeks ahead may be tumultuous, but they may also provide additional opportunities to observe nature closely and notice the miracles amid the mundane. We encourage you to take time to connect with your waterways and take positive actions to protect them. We’ve put together some easy ways for you to do just that while also observing social distancing and keeping yourself and others safe. Please join us!

1) Review your household water use with a water audit to see where you can effectively implement conservation measures.

2) Take a tour of your yard to determine how much water your landscaping really needs, where you can capture rain, disconnect downspouts, and reduce imperviousness. Use the CA Water Budget Program and check your sprinkler system for leaks to stay on track with your water savings. Contact Channelkeeper to get a beautiful 60-gallon oak barrel repurposed from aging wine into a rain barrel and start harvesting the rain!

3) Plant a water-wise organic garden. Whether you plant veggies and herbs to feed your family, native shrubs, or a pollinator sanctuary, planting a garden will nourish your spirit.

4) Filter your fleece. Use the time at home to wash all of your favorite fuzzy clothing without sending micro-fibers down the drain and out to the ocean with the help of a micro-fiber filtering bag.

5) Clean up your beach or creek – After the recent rains there is a lot of trash littering our local creeks and beaches. Protect the ocean while also enjoying a healthy dose of fresh air. Grab a bucket, glove up, and head out!

6) Survey your kitchen, refrigerator, and pantry for single-use plastics. Find ways to reduce your plastic dependency and document your plastic reduction strategies on social media.

7) Sign a plastic reduction petition to support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, a bill that holds the plastics industry, beverage makers, and other companies financially responsible for dealing with the waste they create.

8) Educate yourself about important water issues facing our community. Read up on oil platform decommissioning or Channelkeeper’s efforts to restore flows to the Ventura River. Learn about ocean acidification, sea level rise, or other relevant local water topics on Channelkeeper’s website.

9) Explore your watershed. Go on a hike along a creek. Getting out in nature is good for the body and the soul. Walk on the beach and feel the texture of rain-spattered sand beneath your bare feet. Close your eyes and listen for the whistle of songbirds overhead or the gurgle of water. Maybe you’ll find a prism in a puddle.

10) Amazon Smile: If you’re shopping from home (hello hand sanitizer and toilet paper!), please use Amazon Smile and select Santa Barbara Channelkeeper as your beneficiary of choice. It costs you nothing but makes a difference for Channelkeeper and local water quality!

11) Connect and engage with us on social media. Talk to us on Facebook and Instagram. We want to hear about how you are keeping your spirits up, working for the environment, and finding community while practicing social distancing.

12) Peruse an ocean-inspired classic book like The Sea Around Us, Blue Hope: Exploring and Caring for the Earth’s Magnificent Ocean, of Log From the Sea of Cortez. Enjoy ocean poetry paired with paintings in Santa Barbara artist Mary Heebner’s On the Blue Shore of Silence.

13) Listen to a NOAA podcast to explore beneath the ocean’s surface without ever getting wet.

14) Check out this recent TV interview with Channelkeeper’s executive director Kira Redmond on TVSB’s 805 Focus.

15) Start a Facebook Fundraiser for Channelkeeper. Ask your friends to join you in supporting clean water! Whether they donate $5 or $500, every contribution makes an impact.

The coming months are likely going to test our health care system, our economy, and our society. That’s why it is so important that communities like ours face this challenge together and find ways to help and support one another. We’ll offer more community resources and opportunities to show your love for the ocean in the coming weeks, and we hope to hear from you! In the meantime, we hope you stay healthy and safe!

In solidarity,

The Channelkeeper team

[En Español]

Celebrating 20 Years of Clean Water and Community Impact

February 21, 2020 by Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

For 20 years Santa Barbara Channelkeeper has served our community as a vigilant watchdog and tenacious advocate for the Santa Barbara Channel and its watersheds. We’ve successfully championed stronger policies to better protect our water resources, stopped scores of illegal discharges into the Santa Barbara Channel and its tributaries, removed tons of trash from local beaches and creeks, collected and leveraged much-needed scientific data on the health of our streams, beaches and Channel, engaged 4,500 volunteers in our programs, provided environmental education and exploration for 36,000 youth, and so much more.

None of these achievements would have been possible without the generous support of our community and the many partners we’ve worked with over the years. We are deeply grateful, honored and uplifted by the support and trust our community has invested in Channelkeeper over the past two decades to help us become such a powerful and effective force for clean water.

Channelkeeper will be celebrating our 20^th anniversary throughout 2020, and I invite you to join the party, because we’ll also be celebrating you! Through a series of fun initiatives and events, we will reflect back on our clean water victories over the past two decades, provide opportunities for our community to explore and connect with the waterways we love and work so hard to protect, and honor and appreciate those who have helped us grow and succeed along the way.

For a sneak peek at what’s to come, in the next few weeks we’ll be unveiling a beautiful new website, launching a super fun new community engagement initiative called the Channelkeeper Challenge, and rolling out the first of a series of multi-media profiles recognizing and appreciating twenty Channelkeeper Heroes who have supported our organization and work over the past 20 years.

Stay tuned for other ways to join in the fun of Channelkeeper’s year-long celebration of making waves for two decades!

Meet the R/V Channelkeeper

February 18, 2020 by Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

Every mechanic needs a wrench; every chef needs a knife–these are essential tools that ensure that, as professionals, we’re able to do our jobs effectively. For Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, having a boat on the water is critical to our role as an environmental watchdog. Our boat, the Research Vessel (R/V) Channelkeeper, is a 31-foot JC former lobster boat that allows us to patrol and protect our waterways from pollution and habitat degradation.

Our team sets out several times each month to patrol the Channel for pollution, monitor water quality and the health of marine habitats, conduct scientific research, and educate local youth and other citizens about the extraordinary biodiversity of the Santa Barbara Channel. The R/V Channelkeeper is an integral tool that allows us to better serve our community.

The Boat Enables Scientific Collaboration
Channelkeeper partners with researchers to collect scientific data from our boat to further our collective understanding of human impacts on the marine environment. The valuable research done from the R/V Channelkeeper includes monitoring Marine Protected Areas; measuring ocean acidification; tracking toxic algal blooms; and collecting water and kelp samples to detect potential radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. We’ve also partnered with other Waterkeepers and researchers to monitor and restore kelp and eelgrass habitats at the Channel Islands and along the Santa Barbara coast.

The Boat Hosts Educational Seafaris
The R/V Channelkeeper is a unique educational platform. Our “Seafari” cruises allow local youth to experience the marine environment firsthand, to learn about the Channel’s habitats and inhabitants, and to embrace a lifetime of ocean stewardship. Passengers get to explore the wonders of the underwater world as our diver sends a live camera feed to our on-deck monitor. We’re working to implement live-streaming technology which will enable us to transmit “live dives” directly to classrooms and museums so we can reach an even broader audience beyond those we can physically accommodate on our boat.

The Boat Allows us to Respond to Spills
Immediately after the devastating Refugio Oil Spill in May 2015, our crew was aboard the R/V Channelkeeper bird-dogging the spill response and documenting impacts on the water, shoreline and wildlife. With our boat, we had the means to conduct underwater surveys, collaborate with other scientists to scout for oil on the seafloor, and quickly investigate a suspicious offshore sheen that appeared after the spill. Our boat and staff are now equipped with a spill response kit and plan, and we’re working to get our boat qualified as an official Vessel of Opportunity so we’re prepared to assist with spill response and monitoring in the event of a future spill.

The Boat Facilitates our Role as a Pollution Watchdog
With the recent explosion in the number of cruise ships visiting Santa Barbara, we implemented a strategic monitoring program to ensure that they don’t pollute the Santa Barbara Channel. The Channelkeeper crew sets sail before dawn to meet these floating cities when they cross into the no-discharge zone 12 miles from the Santa Barbara Harbor. With the R/V Channelkeeper, we are well-equipped to remind ships of their obligation to dump no waste and let them know that we are keeping watch. We believe our watchdog patrols provide an effective deterrent to cruise ship pollution.

The Boat Helps our Staff Protect Underwater Parks
The R/V Channelkeeper is invaluable in monitoring the performance of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Santa Barbara Channel. These underwater parks preserve marine ecosystems that provide extraordinary environmental and recreational value. The Channelkeeper crew conducts routine surveys of human activities in and adjacent to the MPAs along the Santa Barbara coast and at the Channel Islands from our boat, collecting useful data to inform MPA management and enforcement. These surveys, combined with our support for biological monitoring in MPAs, help support habitat protections for wildlife survival and human enjoyment.

We hope to welcome you aboard sometime!

City of Ventura Initiates Adjunction of Water Rights in the Ventura Watershed

September 30, 2019 by Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

For 20 years, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper has been a watchdog and advocate for the protection, restoration and sustainable management of the Ventura River and its groundwater. We understand there are questions and concerns about the City’s initiative to commence an adjudication in response to our long-fought efforts to secure a remedy to the City’s excessive pumping of water from the River at Foster Park, which we specifically targeted as detrimental to key ecological functions and community uses of the river.

The City of San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper are pleased to announce an interim settlement in the lawsuit regarding the pumping and diversion of water from the Ventura River Watershed. Both Channelkeeper and the City are dedicated to ensuring the protection of this finite water source and the habitat and species that rely on it while providing water now and for the future. This collaborative agreement brings us another step closer towards this goal.

Click here to read the full press release.