On Saturday, October 24, volunteer scuba divers went down beneath the Edmonds Fishing Pier in Washington and started clearing the bottom. They came back up with abandoned fishing gear, other debris and, according to My Edmonds News, a set of dentures.
The cleanup happens twice a year. It is organized by the Emerald Sea Dive Club, and this round brought in divers from several local groups, including Marker Buoys and Moss Bay. They worked the bottom of Puget Sound around the pier's pilings and underwater structures, at depths of up to about 60 feet.
What Lost Gear Keeps Doing
The point of the dive is not the odd find. It is the fishing line, the tackle and the abandoned crab traps.
Lost line can entangle animals. An abandoned crab trap keeps catching marine life with nobody there to tend it. That gear does not stop working when someone loses it. It just stops being anyone's problem.
Earlier cleanups at the same pier have turned up fishing tackle and crab pots, along with bicycles, cellphones, plastic debris and gold rings. Usable gear that comes up gets a second life: volunteers can keep it or leave it out for others to take.
Hard Work in Cold Water
None of this is easy. Visibility is poor. Currents change. Sharp hooks and loose fishing line can snag a diver's equipment, which is the same hazard that makes the gear dangerous to everything else down there. The work takes careful coordination and strict dive safety procedures.
The City of Edmonds permitted the cleanup and supported it through its parks department with tables, chairs, a canopy, facility access and help registering volunteers.
The angler who filmed the day for his fishing channel thanked the divers and left his fellow fishermen with a thought worth keeping. The next time a line breaks off, he said, remember that somebody eventually has to go down there and deal with it.
We Find the Same Thing in Utah
That line could hang in every boat ramp parking lot in Utah.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our volunteer divers do this same kind of work in Utah's lakes and reservoirs today. The fishing gear shows up every time. On our September 12 dive at Deer Creek Reservoir, the haul included fishing poles. On our September 30 crew dive in the same bay, it included fishing tackle. On October 10 at Strawberry Reservoir, four of our divers came up with a fishing pole, a fishing net and a wad of fishing line, part of about 35 pounds of trash by our estimate. Across two crew dives at Deer Creek, we brought up about 58 pounds.
Fishing line is the small end of what sits on the bottom. Our Utah Waterways Submerged Debris Atlas documents an estimated 499 submerged items across 20 Utah lakes, including 56 vehicles and 103 vessels that are individually confirmed. A submerged vehicle carries a fuel tank, engine oil, ethylene glycol and a lead acid battery into the water, and under the Clean Water Act a discharge that leaves a visible sheen on the water is reportable.
Those will take much more than hands. We are working to start recovering submerged vehicles, and we are doing it in order: insurance, permits and commercial dive certification first.
Somebody Has to Go Down There
A lot of what ends up on the bottom of a lake was never thrown in on purpose. A snagged lure. A line that broke off. A dropped phone. It adds up, and it stays put until a diver goes down and brings it back.
In Edmonds, that diver is a volunteer from a local dive club. In Utah, it is us.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit running volunteer dive cleanups on Utah's lakes and waterways and building toward the recovery of submerged vehicles and vessels. Donate or volunteer at fathomrestoration.org.
