On April 15th, bright and early, the Krewe of the Nautilus participated in the 2007 International Coastal Clean-up. This was followed by a nice, lunch at the Press Box. Below is a summary form the Florida organizer:

“We had 180 folks pre-registered, however 349 volunteers actually showed up, certainly a record for our site. It was really hard to foresee this huge number and we ran out of bottled water and t-shirts unfortunately.  That is why it is important to get a good count during pre-registration – I think some of the school and business groups underestimated their counts this year.  Thank you all for your patience.  We will try to limit the numbers next year and route folks to some of the other 15 sites.  I think we had record turnouts all over Hillsborough County and the state as well – it’s very nice to so much interest and so many children participating.

Thank you for all of your hard work.  I know there were many teams that tackled the mangroves and the creek area – a really tough job. We also planted 25 live oak trees in the eastern part of the park – thanks to the Ye Mystic Krewe of the Nautilus.  

We gathered about 3,500 lbs of trash at our site.  Some of the most unusual items included: an autographed baseball, tail light, computer keyboard, cortisone, 50 year old Clorox bottle (not sure how they knew it was that old), saw blade and spark plugs.  Since the tide was out, a number of teams had great success pulling out bottles that would otherwise be covered and unreachable.  

Special thanks go out to Bob and Janet Williams for helping with registration, and my wife, Dorothy Holle for keeping everything going.  It’s tough to get so many folks registered in such a short time but they were up to the task.  What a zoo, but we all survived!

Also, I would like to thank Al Young, Debbie Young and Frank Vasquez from the Tampa Parks Dept.  They provided the heavy duty bags, grabbers and some water.  

Again, Thanks for the hard work!  See you in April 19 for the Great American Cleanup and next September 20 for the annual Florida Coastal Cleanup.”