I Didn’t Expect This Much Trash | Solo Clean Up Mission

Welcome back to 4ocean guys. My name is Alex and we employ captains and crew around the world to clean plastic out of the ocean. So today is the first day back in the new year. So we're back in the shop. We are ready to get things kicked off. Today we're going to be taking the skiff out and going to do some cleanup. We're going to start out the year right. So today we're going to be taking out this skiff. So this is our Carolina Skiff 25LS. So it's a 25 foot boat sitting on a Maritrail trailer with a Suzuki 200 horsepower outboard. And so this is a great skiff. We really like this vessel because it floats shallow. It allows you to get large amounts of weight. It's got a ton of room up here in the front of the boat and it's just a great overall boat for all of our cleanup operations. So this is uh you know outfitted with the Suzuki 200 so it goes pretty fast. It's a great boat for everything we're doing. It's got it we got it outfitted with a Garmin. I think it's 8616 but it's a fantastical rig. So I'm gonna finish getting the boat all loaded up and head on out there. So these are the blue bins that we use and the reason why we use these is it's easy to transport the trash but also right here behind me we've got our weighing station. So this allows us to weigh all the plastic individually and keep track of all the pounds pulled. But these bins are really convenient and help keep the boat clean and get all the trash in there. And we need the cross kicks. So these are our four ocean style cross kicks. These are waterproof shoes that we use for all our cleanups and we partner with Crosskicks. So every pair sold also helps fund cleanups of the Crosskicks. So check them out. All right so we just got to and we're ready to launch the boat and now I'm just going to make sure the plugs are in. All of these straps are taken off. We're going to get this guy in the water. Yeah here we go. Look you can already see tons of plastic. A little green heron. What's up buddy? He's just pecking around looking for some breakfast but nothing but plastic there. Have to get that cleaned up. She's looking sharp. So right now it is high tide so the water level is pretty high which means for cleaning plastic a lot of the beaches aren't going to be as exposed so there's not going to be as much working area but that's not really a problem. Get it set up and go find some stuff. At first I just really want to run the boat. Just got to idle out to the channel before we can go fast here. Meantime we're rocking a little snack. Got to give a big shout out to Chomps guys. Chomps are these meat snacks. They make incredible snacks. Beef, turkey, the whole nine. But they are a partner of ours at 4ocean so they are offsetting their plastic footprint. So for any of the plastic packaging used in their snacks they are paying 4ocean to remove an equivalent amount of plastic directly from the ocean and coastline. So we've got our full-time captains and crew that are supported. We're pulling billions pounds of trash out of the ocean together. But honestly these are just delicious. I've got a lot of limitations with my health stuff on what I can eat so the turkey snacks are like one of the only things that I really can eat. But they are really delicious and they're helping to clean the ocean so we're fired up on them and their partnership. Alright guys we're in this channel. Let's get rocking and rolling. It's beautiful out there offshore. A little gnarly going through the inlet. Those inlets can get pretty intense with all the current going out. It's a full moon right now. So full moon outgoing tide. That standing waves they just stack up. It gets pretty intense but beautiful ocean. Nice little ground swell coming in. Now though it's time to clean some plastic. So just inside Boynton Inlet. That's the inlet right behind me there. But on an incoming tide a lot of that floating plastic will come in the inlet and then it gets washed up in these corns. So behind me one of our hot spots. This is a little condo complex but there's a little beach here and there's a lot of mangroves and there tends to be just a lot of plastic that accumulates over in this area. And so we're gonna you know beach the boat, hop up in there, see what I can find. But nine times out of ten it is loaded with plastic. So let's check around. Oh we got wildlife. Let's do a quick scope and just see what we can see out here. I tend to keep the boat off a little bit because the tide is falling meaning all the water is going out the inlet. So this is gonna lower the water level and then the boat would be stuck. So check this out. This is what I'm talking about. This is you know all that plastic that accumulates up in this area especially on these high tides like this and then it gets trapped here. So see there's just so much debris over in this corner. It's like a hot spot. Wow look at all this. Tons and tons and tons of plastic. Well I do declare we've got our work cut out for us. I'm gonna get the bins, I'm gonna get the trash, I'm gonna get the gloves, the buckets, the grabbers, and it's game time. All right game time. A little float, we got cutlery, some strapping to some pallets, a float with some type of gecko in it. Let's get Mr. Gecko out of there. There we go. A little tackle box. What's so crazy is that like this small area, like not a lot going on, this is going to fill up the bins in no time. Just the volume of plastic out here. Big old fan blade. You don't even know where to start. You just keep going around and it's like it's insane but you find everything. Ropes, lines. I definitely want to try and get ropes and lines you know. It's unrealistic to get every single piece so you try and get as much as you can but when it comes to lines, styrofoam, fishing line, bags, that's the stuff I really try and focus on. Yeah look at all this stuff just wrapped around this mangrove. It's just wild. So I got a goal today. I want to fill up one, two, three of these 55 gallons. That's that's my mission for today. It's 12 40 right now. I'm gonna try and see what I can do. There's a bunch of stuff back here that I want to go check out. What's up Brungan? Bringing some back up here. Dude it's just like everywhere you look. This is insane. Oh boy. Look at all the balloons. Yeah. Aha another nice lure. Look at that. Saving that guy. So many bottle caps. So the bottle caps are actually this far back because this is the tidal area. This is where most of the stuff that floats gets back. So bottle caps are primarily made out of high density polyethylene which is a material that is not as dense as water and it's actually floats. So see foam, all the things that float. These are polystyrene. Most of your to-go wear and all your cutlery. It's white stuff. This is polystyrene. So styrofoam in a sense a form of it. I was just about to talk about this. I was just gonna say about all the things I collect. Right now I'm collecting these guys. Nice little fishing lures but we find vapes. There's so many vapes that we find on these cleanups. Normally you don't find them in here. You find them on the bottom of the ocean when we're diving because they fall in especially like in Lake Boca or any party areas but back here. Whoa look at that thing. Hey. Aha a little Mr. Football Ducky. That's a good one. I shall keep him. All right look at this. Yowza. What do we got here? I don't know. What looks like it's a part of a fad which is a fish attractive device or something. Either way she gotta go. Gotta go. Gotta go. All right more lines or ropes. Get your stupid rope. All right I saw something over here. I just want to go check this out. I think it looks like a giant net or something but cleaning up this area right over there. So what happens a lot of the times these ghost nets and lines and all sorts of stuff gets wrapped up in these trees. Yep there it is. So let's see if we can't cut this guy out. Get this area cleaned up a little. So whenever you're cutting mangroves you want to be real careful. You don't want to cut down into the mangrove root. Always try and cut up and away. You know I also try and cut as little as possible but if you cut up and away like that then you can clear it out. Get all this stuff off without carving into the mangrove root. Mangroves are the bomb. Gotta love mangroves. A bunch of stuff here. A lot of people ask about water bottles and why they are so gnarly but like this is just an example. One small cove and we're just finding crazy amounts of water bottles. So that's why we encourage everybody bring your reusables. Cut down on single-use plastic. The stuff that you use for a couple minutes and it lasts forever because it's ended up in the ocean. This is where it is. I've been cleaning for a little bit now but already you can see behind me that the boat is now touching sand. So that tide is dropping fast so I'm gonna go push it off a little bit because I will not be able to get this thing off solo if we get stuck.