They removed 310 pounds of abandoned lobster traps, marine rope and other trash from Key Biscayne beach that had washed up on shore due to high winds.
“We call ourselves weirdos picking up trash on the beach,” Rionda said. “It’s a badge of honor.”
Lobster traps can harm reefs and marine animals, Otazo said, and they can do more damage on shore than in the ocean because they also pose a risk to turtles and birds.
“They’re basically big wrecking balls,” Otazo said of the lobster traps. “They can do a lot of damage.”
He said that the bottom of the ocean has piles of large pieces of garbage.
“There’s a deposit that’s built up over the years, and every time we have a big storm it gets pushed onto the land,” said Otazo, who is a long-distance swimmer and marathon runner.
Using a radar app to track hurricane bands, Otazo and Rionda waited for the winds to temporarily dissipate before heading to the beach on Tuesday. Then they hauled away hundreds of pounds of stranded trash, which they accomplished with the help of a stranger and his son, who eagerly joined in the impromptu cleanup.
“It was just a big mess,” Rionda said of the beach, adding that staples, nails and sharp wooden spikes were sticking out of the lobster traps.
Wearing reusable gloves, the men used serrated scissors and a shovel to sift through the rubbish and pile it neatly to the side of the beach. They then contacted Key Biscayne Public Works to remove the hazardous debris they had collected.
“I’m not doing this just because I want to make a difference; I also want to draw attention to this issue,” said Otazo, who shared their trash on Twitter. He usually has recounts his cleanings on social media, with the aim of encouraging others to get involved.
Otazo started cleaning five years ago when he noticed large amounts of debris trapped under the exposed roots of red mangrove trees, native to Florida.
He began researching mangroves and quickly realized their critical role in protecting the region from erosion, especially during extreme weather events including hurricanes.
Otazo picks up litter strewn around shorelines and in the ocean itself, he said, but his specialty is digging through the mangrove forests, most of which are located along the southern part of the State.
Otazo, who was 13 when he fell in love with mangroves, is on a mission to save them, one piece of trash at a time.
For the past five years, Otazo, 35, has spent his weekends and evenings fighting over litter on barrier islands, including around Key Biscayne, where he lives, and other nearby waters.
So far, he has removed over 22,000 pounds of trash from South Florida’s coastal ecosystem. He says he is just getting started.
Riparian forests “are completely covered in trash; car batteries, electronics, anything you can imagine,” said Otazo, who works full-time in public relations. “I started to pick up methodically, and I’ve been going ever since.”
Although he often does solo cleanups, he and Rionda also regularly work together.
Rionda, 55, is the founder of FillABag, a nonprofit waste disposal organization that has installed 57 plastic buckets to collect litter from beaches in seven states across the country. The purpose of his organization, he said, is to encourage people to turn “an ordinary walk into a meaningful cleanup.”
Like Otazo, Rionda is particularly passionate about protecting mangroves, and his nonprofit organization coordinates regular mangrove cleanups.
“Mangroves are a very magical species,” said Anne Birch, director of Florida ocean and coastal strategy for the Nature Conservancy. “They provide a lot of what we call ‘ecosystem services’ for humans. They help stabilize coastlines, they reduce erosion, they harbor a diversity of species.
Plus, she added, “they sequester carbon at four times the rate of terrestrial forests,” meaning they help fight climate change. When mangrove forests are damaged, they release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which has a disastrous effect on the planet.
When it comes to mitigating the effects of natural disasters, mangroves have had a positive impact. Florida’s mangroves mitigated $1.5 billion in direct flood damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017 and protected more than 500,000 people from the killer storm, according to a 2019 report from the Nature Conservancy and several other organizations.
“Based on this data, you can see the power nature can have to protect our lives and properties,” Birch said, adding that mangroves – found in parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas, as well as Australia and the islands of Oceania – are threatened, mainly due to dredging and pollution.
“If mangroves are reduced in size, you reduce the protective benefits they provide,” Birch said.
The work of local activists like Otazo and Rionda is important, she added. “When you start multiplying the power of an individual, you can bring about real change.”
That’s Otazo’s goal. In his spare time, he walks along the coast, trash bag in hand, picking up all the trash in sight. He found everything from virtual reality headsets to a 250-pound block of industrial latex. Once he picked up a body bag – fortunately without a body.
“I found too many,” he said.
Otazo also attends many environmental events and regularly speaks at schools and colleges about the importance of protecting the coastal ecosystem. He ran the Miami Marathon in 2019, carrying more than 30 pounds of trash on his back that he had previously collected.
The purpose of his activism, he said, is to raise awareness and get the attention of local politicians. He advocated for the installation of litter traps that would prevent street waste from reaching the mangroves, as well as a ban on plastic bags.
Florida prohibits municipalities from enacting plastic bag bans.
“That’s a big reason why we can’t get this problem under control,” Otazo said. “That’s why I’m going to the grassroots, for us to educate young people to make it a priority.”
As natural disasters proliferate — which scientists say are fueled, at least in part, by climate change — Otazo thinks his initiative is more important than ever.
Its next coastal litter pick-up is scheduled for this weekend; He and a group of environmental enthusiasts, including Rionda, plan to remove litter from the mangroves of Bear Cut Preserve, on the shores of Biscayne Bay. He will do the same the following weekend – and every weekend thereafter.
“I pledge to do this for the rest of my life, until I physically can’t do it anymore,” Otazo said.
