GULF SHORES, Ala. — A record day for the 25th Annual Coastal Cleanup began early in Gulf Shores on Saturday.

“Lisa Kennedy up in Gulf Shores said she had a group of two buses show up she didn’t know about and both were full of kids,” Coordinator Spencer Ryan said. “And before 8 o’clock.”

Ryan, who is director of the statewide group Alabama People Against a Littered State, was heading up and down the coast visiting other collection sites grabbing up extra T-shirts so both busloads of kids would receive one.

Later officials said it was the largest turnout in Alabama in the 25 years of the event reaching almost 5,000 people.

One of Ryan’s stops was Boggy Point boat launch in Orange Beach. While there were more volunteers, Orange Beach Coastal Resources Director Philip West, a Boggy Point zone captain, said they found less trash.

“At the end of the day we had numerous comments on how much less trash there was compared to years past,” West said. “I believe this had a great deal to do with our waterways and shoreline cleanup program from this summer.”

The new program began before summer and is called the Orange Beach Waterways and Coastline Enhancement Program. It is funded by part of an annual $35,000 coastal resources management grant. About $12,000 of the money was used for the new program.

Orange Beach has used the grant to make improvements to a skiff the city already owns to use in removing trash from the popular islands in Perdido Bay and other back-bay shores. Some of the money was also used to hire lifeguards to man the boat and pick up the trash.

“I thought it was pretty successful,” West said. “You know those guys collected a lot of trash every day, some heavier debris. Some marine construction waste. We learned a lot.”

West also learned of another grant he plans to apply for to fund the program for next two years.

“We’ve got our protocols figured out now and there is a grant announcement through NOAA to establish marine debris removal projects so hopefully with our pilot program and the report we generate, that’ll make us competitive to participate in that grant for the next couple of years,” he said.

“Our proposal is going to be to run it for two years for FY13 and FY 14. We’ve got a lot of the equipment with the skiff and now we’ve figured out how to best utilize personnel and learn a lot of safety things.”

The program’s initial year proved to be a learning experience.

“It was kind of a shakedown cruise,” West said. “There’s a real need for it. It’s not rocket science. Throw some labor and effort at it and a little bit of equipment and I think there’s a big payoff.

“We don’t like to see any trash on our right of ways coming into town and this is probably a lot more harmful to the environment and to marine animals and birds than any of the trash on the right of ways. There’s a real compelling reason to get out there and recover everything we can. They picked up probably a ton of trash and debris.”

To help save the crews time, the boat is housed on a lift at the Alabama Marine Police dock.

“One of the things that we’ll work on being more efficient on is having our vessels on the water and ready to go rather than the launching and loading on a daily basis,” West said. “That eats up a lot of time that you could be spending picking up debris. Now that we have an agreement with Alabama Marine Police the shoreline cleanup boat will be on a lift over there just to drop in the water conveniently.”

Ryan of PALS helps coordinate the Alabama effort as well as other cleanup efforts throughout Alabama.

“We run the Adopt-A-Mile program and in April we have a statewide cleanup program called Don’t Drop it on Alabama,” Ryan said. “We coordinate the Alabama Clean Campus statewide and we have about 500-plus schools. We have full-time retired teachers that go into the schools and talk about litter and recycling programs.”

He has participated in all 25 Coastal Cleanups and said the organization in place makes for a smooth operation.

“After we do the materials distribution on Thursday, everybody’s done this so long it runs like clockwork,” he said. “The key people are the zone captains.”

On a local level, Coastal Cleanup is put on by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and Ryan’s PALS group.

During the previous 24 years, 61,513 volunteers have participated in the Alabama Coastal Cleanup and removed 1.1 million pounds of marine debris from Alabama’s valued coastline.

There are more than 20 cleanup zones across Mobile and Baldwin County.

Alabama’s effort is part of the International Coastal Cleanup that is sponsored by The Ocean Conservancy. Last year during the International Coastal Cleanup, 615,407 volunteers removed nearly 8.7 million pounds of marine debris.