Scuba divers in Santa Monica took an annual coastal cleanup effort below the
surface, scouring for trash that collects near the pier. (Photo by Kim Nowacki)

For more than a decade, Patrick Smith has picked up all kinds of trash during the annual California Costal Cleanup Day: fishing gear, beach toys, plenty of plastic, beer cans and bottles, the occasional human skull (only a replica, it turned out) and, he notes, a surprising amount of women's underwear.

And all of it came from the bottom of the ocean rather than on the sandy beach.

Among the more than 60 coastal and inland sites in Los Angeles County that volunteers scoured for trash during Saturday's 25th annual cleanup, there were three sites actually in the water. The Santa Monica Pier and Redondo Beach hosted scuba dive cleanups, while kayakers took to Marina Del Rey.

Along the pier, Smith and his dive partner Marybeth Guiney, and about 40 to 50 other certified divers, pulled on their wetsuits, headed into the surf and scanned the murky water for garbage.

"It's an area," explained the 58-year-old Smith, a native Californian and Boeing engineer, "that because of the amount of traffic that comes through -- fisherman, visitors, tourists -- the pilings tend to accumulate a lot of debris which probably shouldn't be in the environment, so it gives us a chance to kind of thin it out every year."

In the water, divers are acutely aware of the effect that pollution has on the ocean and its wildlife.

"It's actually heartbreaking," said 36-year-old Tara Mellett, an instructor at the Eco Dive Center, which coordinated the Santa Monica dive. "It makes someone like me more of an advocate and want to get more involved and help people understand it's the little things that get washed out into the ocean and what it's doing to our oceans."

Lauralee Wiseman, 44, a first-time scuba cleanup volunteer from Hermosa Beach, has only been diving for two years, but during a dive she saw a seal hung by fishing line.

"It was horrible," she said. "You always hear about fishing line (endangering marine life) and then you see something like that."

The Los Angeles County cleanup, held the third Saturday of September every year since 1985, is coordinated by the nonprofit group Heal the Bay in conjunction with the California Costal Commission and the L.A. County Department of Beaches and Harbors.

This year, 57 counties in the state participated in a larger international event organized by the Ocean Conservancy organization. In 2008, there were cleanup efforts in 100 countries and 42 U.S. states, according to the Ocean Conservancy's Web site.

On land, families, friends, co-workers and even those going alone were sent out with a trash bag, gloves and a data sheet to document every cigarette butt, every plastic bag and every beer can collected from 9 a.m. to noon.

Once all of the garbage is collected, it's weighed -- L.A. County's 13,000 volunteers picked up 90 tons last year -- and the data is used to help write and advocate for legislation, such as banning Styrofoam and smoking on the beach, said Vicki Wawerchak, director of the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium which is managed by Heal the Bay

"It's one of those things where one person does matter and collectively it makes a huge difference," she said, while helping sign in the beach cleanup volunteers.

And although on their dive Smith and Guiney didn't find any underwear or body parts (real or fake) out of the ocean, they emerged from the water with a mesh bag full of garbage, including an unbroken blue ceramic plate and even two fishing poles.

While there is far more trash in the ocean than the volunteers can grab in a 60 minute dive, Smith said he does see a difference.

"In all honesty, it is getting better," he said. "There's getting to be less debris. People are becoming a little bit more sensitized to what they do with plastic bags and trash. I can actually perceive a change for the better."

The results of today's clean up will be posted at Heal The Bay's Web site.