SPLASH making a difference

Operation SPLASH’s annual cleanup of the wetlands and bays that hug the South Shore has become a tradition for the Bo family of Bellmore. This year, Joann Bo, a mother of three, came with her middle child, 15-year-old Heather Bo, a sophomore at Kennedy High School in Bellmore.

Together, mother and daughter spent the morning of March 16 plodding through the Spartina marsh grass and muck of Swan Island, between Freeport and Merrick, enduring harsh winds and 30-degree temperatures to help collect the cigarette butts, aluminum cans and candy wrappers that others had discarded.

Neither would have spent Saturday morning any other way.

Operation SPLASH (Stop Polluting Littering and Save Harbors) is a Freeport-based, 2,500-member nonprofit environmental group that sends boats crews into the wetlands seven days a week to pick up trash –– a seemingly simple act that, SPLASH officials say, has a profoundly positive effect on South Shore marshes. The wetlands serve two key purposes –– one, as a breeding ground for a host of wildlife, and two, as a protective barrier in the event of a hurricane, so their importance cannot be overstated, according to SPLASH.

The Bos have been helping out at Operation SPLASH cleanups for more than a decade. “I just saw the boat with a SPLASH sign one day, and I’ve been coming to cleanups ever since,” Joann Bo said.

The Bos were among the more than 300 volunteers who turned out for the 16th annual “Op-SPLASH” cleanup on Saturday, at which volunteers boarded boats docked at Freeport’s famed “Nautical Mile” (Woodcleft Avenue) and headed to the archipelago of small islands just to the south. There, they spread out, plastic garbage bags in hand, to collect trash that is blown in and washed ashore throughout the wetlands.

Op-SPLASH is the South Shore’s biggest cleanup of the year. Over three hours on Saturday, volunteers collected enough trash to fill two Town of Hempstead barges.

Charlie Fisene, 85, of Baldwin, has been a SPLASH volunteer for a decade. He comes to Op-SPLASH, he said, because “it’s something positive.” He has found anything and everything through the years on cleanups, including two guns in a plastic bag off the Meadowbrook Parkway last year. He turned them in to police.

James Miller and his wife, Donna Shulman, of Hewlett, came to their first Op-SPLASH on Saturday. “We kayak these waters,” Miller said. “The bay is just a total mess. I know that it took a beating during [Hurricane Sandy]. Wherever we come aground, there’s always debris.”

“We’re out here all summer,” Shulman said. “It’s a great place to watch the wildlife. We just wanted to do what we could to help the environment.”