Bringing clean back to bay

Candy wrappers. A giant light-up plastic Easter bunny. Couch cushions. Education Director Briana Madden of the nonprofit group Orange County Coastkeeper has seen it all floating in Upper Newport Bay.

“What goes into the storm drain ends up as trash in the bay,” Madden said. “The tennis balls and the Styrofoam is just what we can see that’s in the water. You can’t see the oil or the fertilizers.”

The group has organized two volunteer trips this year to pick up hard-to-reach trash in the bay using kayaks. Coastkeeper hopes to get the area spruced up before the beginning of nesting season later this month for some of the more than 200 species of birds that call the estuary home.

“This is a really special place — one of the few coastal wetlands left in California,” Madden said. “We have a really unique habitat here.”

At high tide, Styrofoam packing peanuts, candy wrappers and Del Taco soft drink cups float to the surface of the bay and gather into small clusters of garbage amid the cordgrass.

Styrofoam coffee cups typically breaks down into small clumps that are mistaken for fish eggs and eaten by birds, Madden said.

The cordgrass that grows large clumps in the shallow waters of Upper Newport Bay is home to one of the country’s largest populations of the light-footed clapper rail. The endangered, brown-speckled bird nests in the cordgrass are often clogged with Styrofoam and plastic food wrappers, Madden said. Scientists believe Upper Newport Bay is the only place where clapper rails breed in the wild successfully, according to Newport Bay Naturalists and Friends.

“That’s one of those direct relationships that makes you feel like you are really making an impact being out here,” she said.

At the end of the morning, the volunteers gathered on the beach next to their kayaks to share their more unusual finds. The strangest objects earned the finder a free T-shirt. A soccer ball, day-Glo Frisbee, a plastic dustpan, a decomposing Beanie Baby stuffed cow and a child-size football were among the finds.

Perhaps it is a testament to the popularity of tennis in Newport Beach that the volunteers have found dozens of tennis balls floating in the Back Bay on their clean-up trips.

“I don’t know where they all come from,” Madden said.

Volunteer David Prohoroff, 25, of Orange, found a plastic oil drum and a 5-foot-tall piece of rotting plywood with rusted nails sticking out of it.

“It’s just proof that it’s a major watershed area, and anything that ends up in our storm drains ends up here,” he said.

Both the San Diego Creek and the Santa Ana-Delhi Channel drain into the Upper Bay, according to Newport Bay Naturalists and Friends.

The bay’s 154-mile watershed area includes parts of Costa Mesa, Irvine, Lake Forest, Laguna Hills, Newport Beach, Orange, Santa Ana and Tustin.

Tran Nguyen, 23, of Fountain Valley found a Nike tennis shoe and an oversized black, plastic trash can lid floating among the cordgrass.

Nguyen was surprised to find so much garbage floating in the water. The trip will make her think more about what she throws in the garbage, she said.

“I think just being out here makes us more aware about how much of our trash affects the environment,” she said.

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.