Can a pink dye help control bird poop at the pier? Santa Monica gives it a try

On a recent Thursday, there were only a handful of people wading, swimming, or body boarding in the ocean just north of the Santa Monica pier.

“It's just fun, it's got a good break and there's nobody out here, so I get the whole place to myself," said Matt Hill, as he walked out of the water wearing a wetsuit, swim fins and carrying a body board. "I don't have to compete with 50 other guys and guys that are really good."

Hill bodyboards here a couple times each week. He says he knows this part of the ocean is polluted — because he’s gotten sick a few times, calling it “just like a small flu."

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The pollution here is serious. Bacteria and pathogens have been detected here year after year, which can lead to eye and ear infections, gastrointestinal illnesses and skin rashes.

Matt Hill bodyboards next to the Santa Monica Pier despite knowing the ocean water is polluted.

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Officials are taking two significant steps to help address the bacterial pollution — one of these efforts start on Monday. They hope to gain important information about how the water circulates and to bring researchers together to try to address the problem.

What’s causing the pollution? It's from high above

The DNA test that could determine with certainty the type of pollution that is in the water — and therefore where it's coming from — is expensive. So officials have opted instead for water quality tests, which point to fecal matter as a likely suspect — from birds.

Annelisa Moe, with Heal the Bay, points to ripped netting under the Santa Monica Pier.

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“It is very likely that birds are a major source of the bacteria pollution under the pier,” said Annelisa Moe, associate director of science and policy at Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica-based environmental nonprofit. “We have human activity and food and trash and all of these things happening around the pier, it attracts more birds than would naturally be here."

That bird activity is not new, and has likely been an issue since people began fishing from the pier.

Years ago, city officials installed nets along the underside of the pier to keep birds and their feces and feathers from falling into the water.

A sign at the Santa Monica Pier warning of ocean pollution.

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“It's clearly not working as originally intended,” Moe said as she crouched under the pier and pointed to tears and holes in the netting. “Over here we have a couple of birds that have made their way inside the bird netting. We also see some bird eggs here. There might have been a bird using the net as a nest."

A pink dye and a task force

One step officials are taking on Monday is to study how the currents move around the pier by dropping pink dye in the ocean.

“This will illuminate it and let us really visually see the polluted area,” said Santa Monica Mayor Lana Negrete, who'll be there Monday morning for the experiment. “Netting [may have been] a good idea at one point, and now it might be potentially the cause of some of this additional pollution.”

Missing netting under the Santa Monica Pier.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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But the city, she said, is not rushing to get rid of the nets.

"I guess the idea is that we look at what would be done in place of that,” Negrete said.

To that end, Heal the Bay and Santa Monica are creating a task force of experts in the environment, public policy and other subject areas to come up with solutions.

If you know, you know

Yellow signs warning people not to go into the water had been put up in many areas around the pier. But on Thursday, only one appeared to be posted on a pillar on the north side. On the south side, one of the signs laid flat on the sand.

“I didn't see any warnings… all I saw was that 'No trespassing,'” said Shalee Pinal when told about the water pollution. She was visiting from Las Vegas and stopped by the pier with her teenaged son, who was walking barefoot in the ocean water.

"I had no idea,” she said. “I let him put his feet right in there. Maybe we should go wash his feet off."

But longtime Santa Monica residents have always known.

“My father-in-law was a lifeguard," said Paul Hawkins, who was walking barefoot in the water in his surf trunks. "A lot of the lifeguards that were in his generation got sick from diseases that were attributed to the pollution in the water."