“Being dirty never really bothered me,” Ryan Wong says.
The Santa Barbara native grew up going to the ocean often—diving, fishing, or surfing. He’s also a motorcycle mechanic and service manager. Needless to say, he’s never been afraid of getting messy. But on a trip back from Catalina Island when he and his neighborhood buddy Ryan Hughes noticed a boat dumping trash directly into the ocean, the mess-loving guys turned their passion for the ocean into a project.
Tidy Seas was born from that trip out on the Pacific and Wong and Hughes’ desire to focus solely on trash. In just a short period of time, the 501c3 nonprofit (as of 2024) has hosted more than four dozen events from Carpinteria to Ventura and picked up over 50,000 pounds of trash.
The team started with the nonprofit Commercial Fisherman of Santa Barbara, to get out on the water and clean it up, continuing with monthly cleanups and weekly Summer Series hangs.
“I wanted to be different,” Wong says. “It’s not exciting to just come to a beach to pick up trash.” So Tidy Seas partners with local companies like Hook & Press, Handlebar, Santa Barbara Chicken Ranch, and Pali Wine to make their beach cleanups exciting. More than 500 volunteers not only get a caffeine and carb boost in the morning, but each person gets a raffle ticket automatically (if they stay until the end).
“It makes it like an event, and it’s built a really cool community,” he says. And the community continues to grow. Wong enthusiastically shares about some regulars who come to nearly every monthly pickup, who’ve helped spread the word about this small but mighty nonprofit.
Their focus isn’t just on beaches, either. In the summer, weekly beach cleanups happen across town in places like the Funk Zone, and they’re applying for grants to help clean out river beds in Buellton. Plus, the City of Goleta named them team captains for its annual Earth Day celebration.
Tidy Seas is poised to ride an unsinkable wave into the summer, with lofty goals like purchasing their own Tidy Seas boat for ocean cleanups.
For cleanup dates: tidyseas.org
“I wanted to be different. It’s not exciting to just come to a beach to pick up trash.”