The 27th Annual Avalon Harbor Underwater Cleanup will be held on Saturday, February 23, 2008. This is the one time a year that diving is permitted in Avalon Harbor and has become Southern California's most popular diving event. Last year, 550 divers from California and other western states and even some foreign countries turned out to clean up Avalon Harbor and have a lot of fun at the same time.

The dive will start at 9:00 a.m. Divers will scour the harbor searching for trash and debris which will be sorted by volunteers.  Prizes and awards are given at the afternoon Award Ceremony at 1:00 p.m. at the Wrigley Stage in downtown Avalon.  Awards given last year for trash recovered included Oldest, Most Useless, Most Valuable, Most Perverted, Best Dressed and the popular Silver Tongue Award for the tallest tale about the dive.

The cost to register for the event is $35 if registered by January 31st and $45 if after that date. Registration is available online on the Conservancy website listed below. Snail mail entries are not encouraged, due to the high cost of manual entry.

Proceeds benefit the Catalina Island Conservancy's Robert Given Fund for Ocean Conservation, and the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber. Catalina Conservancy Divers is a support group of the Catalina Island Conservancy that is dedicated to the restoration and protection of Catalina Island. CCD has been conducting underwater monitoring projects around Catalina since 1992.

The Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber is located at the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies near Two Harbors.  The Chamber is the closest life support recompression chamber to the heavily dived Catalina area and has been responsible for saving many lives over the years.

All participants in the event will receive a T-shirt and be eligible for a door prize drawing.  In addition to the door prize, numerous prizes totaling over $15,000 in value will be raffled off during the Awards Ceremony.

Catalina is located 22 miles from the Los Angeles/Orange County coast and can be reached by boat from Long Beach, San Pedro, Dana Point and Newport Beach.  For information regarding transportation, hotel accommodations, activities, events or other services visit www.eCatalina.com. For questions regarding the event itself, contact the Conservancy @ 310-510-2595 x 123 or e-mail: avalonharborcleanup@gmail.com

For more information visit www.CatalinaConservancy.org