Kids, trash, kids, trash, adults, trash...

By the time evening rolled around, we had a bit of a tempo going on the Charles River: a group of kids would show up, we'd discuss the problem of marine debris, we'd play 'how long does it take to break down', introduce the ROV and then find and retrieve some trash and then do it again. Our pile of debris steadily grew and the number of kids excited by the whole process steadily grew. For lack of a better description, it was very cool.

Overall we had around 450+ people ages 8 to 60ish join us for our dockside marine debris program, technology demonstration and trash removal operations over 2 days out of the Providence Community Boating Center and then Boston Community Boating.

We had a little more time with each group in Providence and much better visibility. The Center is located in India Point just at the bottom of the hill from Brown University (my alma mater) and is clean, open and very pretty (very much unlike that area when I went to school there). John O'Flaherty and his team have done an excellent job. The kids were psyched about our program, clearly were enjoying their sailing camp

and even listened to their instructors!

There is a lot of current in the river at their location and that affected our trash haul. On the surface, it was all about state of the tide. As the tide ebbed, there was a lot of trash drifting by on the surface (helped by recent rain and an unusually high tide).

We wrangled a bucket out of the flow and tried to catch other bits and bottles by hand. The less water, the less trash we saw on the surface. We did not find a lot of trash on the bottom. What we did find was too anchored under rocks for us to pull out, I am sure all a result of the high current just taking everything to the outside of a bend or out to sea.

It was clear whose habitat we were protecting... crabs. Big ones. We were treated to a show of crabs running around, mating, sitting on wood and clearly telling us to go away (see Gallery section of our web site for videos and more photos).

At the end of the junior program, John (the Exec. Director), Will Lippit (Program Director) and I went out to look for a wreck. We used the Tritech Starfish side scan sonar and got some great images (to the left shows some trees and other debris on the bottom near the channel). We did not find the wreck, just some logs and general debris but it looked like the bottom was swept clean by the high current. The Starfish is a very small, very easy to use piece of equipment that gave incredibly clear images of the bottom. We ended the day anchored off of a wreck that is half dry at low tide checking out it's resident population of crabs and John showed he has a steady hand flying the ROV for the first time.

The next day was all about volume. Volume of kids and volume of trash. Community Boating Boston is one of the country's busiest sailing centers. It was like choreographed chaos. That day somewhere in the range of 300-350 kids came for lessons or just to sail. There were 50-75 boats coming in and out all day and all the time there was very little yelling. No crying. No panic. Just fun. Amazing. A tribute to Charlie Zechel, Amy Lyons and their large crew of instructors, dock staff and maintenance crew (who work really hard keeping those boats in one piece).

We started at the West end of the docks (the high performance section). While the boats may have been high performance, it was the worst visibility in which I have ever operated an ROV. I would say we had 2-4". There were times I could not see the manip

ulator right in front of the camera. That said, with the help of the kids, we were able to find and pick up several wrappers and pieces of plastic.

Eventually we relocated to the center dock and center of the action. Though we still needed the Lyyn image enhancement system, the visibility was marginally better and the haul began. We found hundreds of bottles and cans and picked up everything from unidentified bits of plastic to a baseball, wrist tags, cups, wrappers, plastic jugs, pieces of a Laser and Mercury mast, a Mercury jib (yes the whole sail, jib sheets and all) and more. Our best find was an old ship's bell.

I will put a lot of the photos up on a new section of the web site: Gallery including a great video from Providence of a crab getting very angry at our approach.

It was a great 2 days. Certainly proves there is a need to both get cleaning and keep educating (sheer volume and type of trash in the rivers and amount of life in and near the rivers).

Looking forward to more.