It's no secret that Sooke has many beaches – the town's motto is 'Where the rainforest meets the sea.' They can, however, be a lot to manage, and now one family is taking keeping those beaches clean into their own hands, but they’re also looking for support.
Tyler Bohn Madi Growthen, their two kids and dog Monty have been tidying Sooke’s shores for some time now, loosely under the name The Coastal Cleanup Initiative, but rising costs are making it difficult.
“The stacking costs of getting rid of the garbage and everything associated with it – with people and trucking, dump fees – add up fast,” Bohn said.
“It’s easy to fill up garbage bags or the back of a pickup truck, but now you've got to get rid of it.”
With his priority focused mainly on remote beaches, Bohn has also taken his efforts offshore, using a small boat to clean up trash along the shoreline. But this brings its own costs.
To sustain his efforts, Bohn started a GoFundMe to cover those costs. So far, he has surpassed his $1,000 goal with a total of $1,364 raised. While he is keeping it a casual effort for now, if he could get the money together, Bohn says it is something he would do full time.
“If I could make it into a job, I most certainly would,” said Bohn.
“I don’t think it's going to happen on volunteer funds, but if I could get government funding or something, I’d much rather be on the water picking up garbage than just going to work.”
Bohn was born and raised in Sooke, and now resides in East Sooke. He works as a carpenter at his day job and has a treehouse he rents out as an Airbnb.
He noticed that while popular and accessible beaches like Sombrio were often subject to beach cleanups, some of the smaller beaches were not getting much attention.
“We started taking the boat out to all the different remote beaches that get completely neglected,” Bohn said.
“We started getting to the beaches full of garbage, and we didn't want to sit at a beach full of garbage, so we just cleaned it up, and then we were sitting on a beach that wasn’t full of garbage.”
For Bohn, the mission and the motivation are as simple as that – it's just nicer to have clean beaches. Although there are of course other motivators, like ensuring fish and marine life don’t consume garbage to be passed down the foodchain, keeping the ecosystem healthy and inspiring others.
While cleaning up beaches may not be the most glamorous work, for Bohn it’s a family affair. His two kids seem to love it, and for them, it seems to be just another day at the beach.
“The kids love it, they stay busy – they’re much happier when they’re in fresh air. They like picking up trash too; they get excited about it,” said Growthen.
“We have outdoor kids,” Bohn says with a laugh.
With the help of his family, Bohn can go over the beaches with a fine-toothed comb, making relatively short work of big pieces of garbage that washed up in places like Roche Cove.
But the little bits of garbage are the most challenging. On May 15, the family hiked down to Roche Cove with a vacuum cleaner to attempt to remove some piles of Styrofoam that had collected on the shore.
“That’s kind of our target now,” he said.
“With these handy new portable vacuums, (we can) get all that really fine stuff because that’s almost impossible to get rid of unless you vacuum it up.”
As he continues to grow the Coastal Cleanup Initiative, Bohn has some big ambitions. He has his eyes on more volunteers, more funding, bigger boats and trucks, he even wants to get burn permits to clear out some areas to get to trash covered in debris.
While there may not be financial incentives for Bohn, the positive response from his community and a love for his home keep him motivated.
“I think everybody should have pride in where they live,” said Bohn.
