Two Orange County surfers have taken their passion for water activities and transformed it into a passion for the water's health.
Mark Ward, 46, from Laguna Beach, and Billy Dutton, 51, from Newport Beach, returned from a 13-day, 350-mile "electric surfing safari" Saturday.
During their trip, they traveled in a 22-foot solar-powered electric Duffy boat and surveyed the amount of plastic along the California coast, aiming to spread awareness about pollution in the ocean and the effects it can have.
After using a trawl and pool skimmer to collect water samples that contain tiny particles of plastic, Ward and Dutton, who are members of the Riding Currents surf team, sent the samples to 5 Gyres, an advocacy group for healthy waters that tested them to determine their plastic-to-water ratio.
Dutton said that the top plastic items they found were water bottles, single-use bags and drinking straws.
While searching in the Alamitos Bay Marina, they found a plastic water jug that was covered in so much unidentifiable marine growth that it "looked like it was covered by an afro."