In September 2016, uninsured boat captain Roy Underwood reportedly fell asleep at the wheel of his 54-foot fishing vessel, the Verna A II, and crashed it into South Salmon Creek Beach, a popular surfing and beachcombing spot near Bodega Bay. After being rescued, Underwood fled the authorities, only to be apprehended after buying a bottle of vodka.
The U.S. Coast Guard contracted with Sausalito-based Parker Diving Service, which removed the fuel, batteries, and chemicals onboard, as well as some fishing gear. Parker Diving Service inquired with California State Parks and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) about removing the entire steel-hulled boat. But neither agency had the money for that.
So the boat sat there. Thus began a nine-year saga, during which no one succeeded in getting it off the shoreline. This year the saga has come to an end. The old hull and other decaying parts have been removed, thanks to a Biden-era federal grant, eliminating a threat to beachgoers and wildlife. But a look at why it sat there for so long lays bare the difficulty of cleaning up a coastline that is littered with old boats and other large refuse. And such cleanups could become even more difficult if the NOAA marine debris program that logged this win is affected by proposed Trump administration cuts to the agency’s budget, now being negotiated in Congress.
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The Verna A II sat, but it didn’t sit still. Surf and sand slowly pounded it apart. And over the years, the ocean carried the boat about three-quarters of a mile south, then moved it back up close to where it originally grounded. “It’s just the surf doing what it does,” says Terry Politi, co-owner and salvage master at Parker Diving Service.
By 2017, the boat was entirely buried by sand. It occasionally reemerged into view as the wind, waves, and currents shifted the sands around, and whenever it did so its vintage charms drew visitors, including kids who played on it, never mind the rusty metal protrusions lurking underfoot.
Meanwhile, the boat continued shedding foam insulation and other litter onto the beach. “It breaks into really tiny pieces, and it’s really hard to pick up,” says Caroline Provost, a California State Parks environmental scientist. Hard for humans to pick it all up, that is, and easy for birds or fish to ingest as the pieces break down into microplastics. Max Delaney, a NOAA resource protection specialist for the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, which lies offshore of South Salmon Creek Beach, says birds and fish sometimes mistake such foam bits for food, or accidentally swallow them. In addition, any abandoned fishing equipment could wash out to sea and entangle seabirds, whales, seals, and other animals. Abandoned traps, nets, hooks, and other “ghost gear” kill some 200 seabirds annually in just the Greater Farallones sanctuary. “It’s basically a death machine for marine life,” Delaney says.
Abandoned and wrecked boats keep piling up along the coast, including in San Francisco Bay and throughout the Delta. In February 2024, another fishing vessel, the Aleutian Storm, beached within about a mile of the Verna A II. Largely because it was insured, that cleanup took place within months, instead of years. But insurance is not required for boats in California or most other states. Uninsured boat owners are supposed to take responsibility for beached or sunken vessels, but some are too broke. Others can’t be tracked down, like Underwood, who disappeared following a brief jail stint. Taxpayers, and the environment itself, are left to foot the bill. “There’s a big backlog of large marine debris, like vessels and sometimes even planes and cars,” says Michaela Miller, acting conservation co-director at the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of the National Marine Sanctuary System.
A game-changer arrived in 2021, when Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which included tens of millions of dollars for cleaning up marine debris nationwide. “The BIL funds allowed us to tackle the big stuff,” says Miller, whose organization got a $15 million grant to remove the Verna A II and other languishing hunks of junk in five U.S. marine sanctuaries and a tribal marina.
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But the delays took their toll. Salvage efforts become costlier the longer these items sit there. The Verna A II could have been disposed of immediately—before it sank into the sand—for less than half the current price tag of about $500,000, according to Maria Nunn, safety officer at Parker Diving Service. And by the time all the necessary state and federal permits were obtained for the Verna A II cleanup, a new administration had come to power, with a very different attitude toward environmental regulation.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to pause funding from BIL and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate bills. The Trump administration also initiated attempts to claw back already allocated (and in some cases even contractually obligated) climate-related grants. Meanwhile, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency was firing federal workers left and right. At NOAA alone, it sought to slash some 2,300 jobs. At least one terminated NOAA employee had been helping to oversee the Verna A II cleanup. The urgency built, furthermore, as the breeding season for threatened western snowy plovers approached. Any beach work would be halted from March through September to protect their nesting sites.
The National Marine Sanctuary Foundation was determined to end the saga of the Verna A II. “Until we have a stop-work order, we’re going,” Justin Boevers, the nonprofit’s marine debris manager, told Bay Nature at the time.
So on a misty Monday in late February, a crew assembled at South Salmon Creek Beach, led by Parker Diving Service, which had been there at the beginning. First, the crew installed mesh fencing around the shipwreck to prevent debris from escaping. Then, as the tide ebbed, exposing the tattered hulk, three large excavators descended to the shoreline and began smashing it apart with their shovels. While an osprey soared overhead, other workers in hard hats and fluorescent vests raked up the foam bits now covering that section of beach. In between helping out with raking, Provost scared off a gull flock that kept inching closer to an oil slick caused by the remnants of fuel left in the boat’s engine.
On the second evening, with darkness descending and the tide approaching, the excavators popped the hull out of the sand and dragged it up the beach. “The excavator operators really saved the day,” says Nunn. “If they hadn’t pushed, the vessel would have been buried again overnight.” They would have had to start over, jeopardizing their ability to finish before the plovers arrived.
To complete the job, the crew spent the next few days collecting leftover debris, cutting up the boat with blowtorches, and separating recyclable metals from landfill-bound plastics, wood, and concrete. Each night, a guard watched over the machinery. “Some of this stuff is cool-looking,” Nunn says. “We don’t want people climbing into the heavy equipment, and we don’t want people walking away with it or messing with it or hurting themselves with it.”
The morning after the operation wrapped up, the first nesting pair of snowy plovers was spotted in the area.
