Video: Young Seattlelite dove deep to keep city clean

For many, the remnants of plastic wrappers, tires, batteries and other human products at the bottom of the Puget Sound are out-of-sight and out-of-mind. But that wasn’t good enough for one young Seattleite.

“There was a lot of bottles, aluminum cans, tons of porcelain that probably broke off of toilets, shoes, rubber pieces and pieces of PVC pipes … a lot of little things like condoms and cigarette butts, candy wrappers,” Tanner O’Donnell listed off.

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The 17-year-old knows first hand. Tanner recently organized a considerable effort to clean up a popular portion of Puget Sound. A senior at Nathan Hale High School, the cleanup was part of his senior project &#8212 an assignment aimed at getting seniors to give back to their communities.

“As soon as we got assigned this project I knew I wanted to do something with diving … the idea of hosting a cleanup, especially at Cove 2, just popped into my head right away because it’s one of best local dive spots,” he said, noting that new divers are often introduced to scuba diving at Cove 2.

Cove 2 is located just off of Seacrest Park in Alki, near the passenger ferry dock. Its calm waters make it a popular destination for divers. People like Laura James, aka
Diver Laura and self-described citizen diplomat for Puget Sound have pulled nearly half a ton of led batteries out of the area’s waters. And that’s just one portion of the trash.

“From a simple standpoint, when you are walking along the beach you don’t want to see trash everywhere,” she said. “If you walk around Green Lake and see garbage, that would not be an incentive to walk there. Just because it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

“(Cove 2) is a heavily dived sight … Divers are kind of the last stand for picking up this trash,” James said. “How else is it going to be removed? The problem is that there are few places you can go and see human influence underwater &#8212 our litter and trash.

Tanner was able to get in touch with Project Aware, a diving effort to clean up water bodies. He organized a crew of about 10 divers &#8212 and about as many supporters on shore as well &#8212 to clean up the portion of Puget Sound.

His project led to the removal of about 50 pounds of trash. Volunteers on the shore then cataloged the trash, separated it into plastics, glass and so forth, and sent it along to proper waste management.

“You have to take matters into your own hands if you want to get it clean, it’s not just going to happen,” Tanner said. “Stuff gets piled up.”