Transparentsea: Bolsa Chica to Newport Beach

The group encountered two blue whales near the end of the day outside of Newport. “Magnificent, hard to know what to say…the biggest and one of the oldest creatures on the planet. They swam around us for about an hour-and-a-half. Everyone was tripping out at the enormity of them, but they were so graceful, just cruising around,” said Hilton (photo: Dawe)

Above: Hard to imagine by looking at this photo, but the water is along the coast is quite turbid (lots of sentiment) and there’s LOTS of plastic the entire way. “We were picking up balloons, spray cans, stuffed animals, all kinds of rubbish … as we moved down the coast. Further out in the deeper water, it seemed to clear, but there’s is still so much waste floating out there.” says Lauren. Fish and other marine animals regularly mistake the plastic for food, eat it and either die a painful death or live and eventually it passes through the food chain. Not good. (photo: Dawe)