That’s Neal Chism, whose story we told here last October — the self-described “semi-retired engineer” who is working to help local wildlife by intercepting trash and debris on a stretch of the Duwamish around the West Seattle Bridge. He sent an update this week on how it’s going, and a few new photos, like this one:

That’s a small picture frame full of fishing tackle floats known as “Corkies” that Neal says he recovered from the river over a period of about three days. When we met him in October, he talked about the great “Pacific Garbage Patch” of plastic debris. (Here are photos you may not have seen before.) But the water can contain potentially lethal metals too:

Neal explains that’s a lead-covered water sampler recovered from the river. He says it’s “used by a local university … we are trying to get them to ‘get the lead out’.” So what about the big picture? Here’s the status update he included in his note:

To date, I am up to about 900 e-mails on this single topic since your writeup in the blog. I have several grant proposals in work to transform the small collection experiment started, into a formal program via NOAA and Port of Seattle funds. The actual experiment is going very well, the trash levels are down to very low levels on the river and visibility of the water is very good. The bird population seems to be increasing and it is great to see. So your efforts and attention to this issue are helping to solve the problems we have.

It is a continual challenge to keep the areas clean as you can imagine, and the first month of the year had been very busy, just see my latest reports to the Soundkeepers. [Here’s the direct link.] The warm weather has been helping greatly.

One more photo of what Neal has found along the way – “just one of three large plastic dock lines recovered from the river, each about 50 pounds in weight”:

(2:53 pm note: Neal just sent word the Seattle Channel will feature his work on Feb. 18; it’ll eventually be available for online stream here He added, “If people can, get down to the small pocket parks of T105 and Diagonal Way. They are great for lunchtime sunning and relaxing, and the river is always a busy place with the maritime traffic.”)

Side note: Though this is not officially related to Neal’s efforts, there’s a boat tour of the Duwamish coming up this Wednesday, noon-2 pm, guided by Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, ARCADE Journal, and what the invite describes as “members of Seattle’s design community.” Tickets are available online, here. And watch for details on how to join Duwamish Alive! cleanups with DRCC and others on April 17, marking the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. But in the short run, every day you can take action – by doing everything you can to keep trash and debris out of our waters – that includes taking care about what you flush or put in other drains at your home/workplace.