SPANISH FORT, Alabama - Thousands of volunteers answered the call at the 24th annual Alabama Coastal Cleanup Saturday when organized groups and individuals spent the morning combing the coast from Orange Beach to Dauphin Island. At Five Rivers Delta Resource Center on the causeway, a maritime effort was underway, with members of the Mobile Bay Kayak Fishing Association loading their vessels with waterlogged refuse.

“This is our fourth year out here and this is the most trash we’ve collected,” said Jorge Cancel, who swept the shoreline of Sardine Pass with his daughter Grace. “We found lots of bottles, cans, rope, a folding chair, and Styrofoam.”

Other items recovered in Spanish Fort included tires, antifreeze and oil containers, political campaign signs, fencing and large garbage bins. Shonda Borden, assistant manager at Five Rivers, said more than 70 people assisted with the effort there, including Jack and Jill and the Spanish Fort High School Key Club. “It was kind of slow the first year we did it seven years ago,” Borden said. “But as word has gotten out, more people have come.”

Borden said the cleanup is important not just as an effort to remove garbage from the environment, but also as an educational tool.

“It’s not just about picking up trash for one day,” Borden said. “Tomorrow, if you see it, maybe you’ll have more of a conscious effort to clean it up. And if everyone does their little part, it will make a big difference over time.”

The Alabama Coastal Cleanup is a small part of an international effort to keep waterways clean. The International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) is the largest single-day volunteer event for the marine environment, according to the ACC’s Web site. Statewide, more than 61,513 volunteers have removed 1,169,844 pounds of trash from 3,917 miles of shoreline in the past 23 years. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources partners with Alabama PALS (People Against a Littered State) and scores of corporate sponsors for the annual event.

Elsewhere along the Eastern Shore Saturday, 224 volunteers were registered at May Day Park and by 9 a.m. had already recovered many large items such as tires, furniture and a large inflatable pool. Registered volunteers in Fairhope included more than 600 individuals, where Fairhope Public Works expected to fill a 50,000 pound truck to capacity.

“It’s a citywide cleanup in Fairhope,” said Gary Gover, who helped coordinate the cleanup at the municipal pier. “We have people on the coast and inland. It all ties together, no matter where the litter is, it’s going to end up in the waterways.”

Once volunteers collected trash, they were asked to fill out a survey sheet identifying what they found and from where it was recovered. The information will eventually be compiled by the Ocean Conservancy as a part of a global annual report about garbage in the water.

“I think the data that is collected is the most important part of it,” Gover said, flipping through the Ocean Conservancy’s report from 2010. “This information is invaluable.”