Volunteers rally to clear Sonoma Coast beach of debris from wrecked fishing vessel Aleutian Storm

Dozens of volunteers on Saturday collected hundreds of bags of debris ripped by the sea from the wreckage of the Aleutian Storm fishing boat and scattered the length of several football fields along Salmon Creek Beach.

“It was a great great, great turnout, I’m so inspired,” said Cea Higgins, who helped organize the event as advocacy coordinator and former executive director of Coastwalk/California Coastal Trail Association. She estimated at least 85 people, each of whom filled two or three 30-gallon contractor garbage bags, showed up on a day threatened by rain that, ultimately, stayed pretty much away.

“We’re so, so lucky, it's primarily been sunny,” Higgins said. “We just had one little squall move through. And by the time everybody got their rain gear on, it stopped.”

The 58-foot Aleutian Storm came aground late Feb. 9 and was torn apart by subsequent winter storms. Salvage crews cutting up what remained of the vessel — including parts of the hull and keel — had to suspend work until June to wait for better tidal conditions.

For weeks now, clumps of nonbiodegradable polystyrene foam have been torn loose from the boat’s remaining wreckage, adding to the debris field along the beach.

Higgins said that as well as the Styrofoam pieces scattered the length of the beach there were several areas — the largest about 100 yards south of the wreckage — where masses of it had collected after having been tossed by the meeting of north and south swells and the ensuing wave action, and dispersed by high tides.

Prior to the cleanup, state parks officials using laminated photographs oriented volunteers to one of the day’s stickier wickets: that snowy plovers are in their breeding season along the same strip of beach above the high tide line where most of the debris was concentrated. Officials also roped off the areas occupied by the small, federally endangered birds, Higgins said.

"People really responded, really paid attention, and were super careful,“ she said. ”And everybody who participated will get the word out to others that, ‘Hey, first of all, there's a real problem here. We need lots of help. This is going to take a long time to clean all this up. But everybody who comes here has to be careful of doing it in a certain way, so as not to disturb the snowy plovers.’“

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @jeremyhay