Buoy 4, Kiwanis, Splash team up to clean the bay

Kevin Owens of East Rockaway worked for many years as a first mate aboard a ship, and would often describe himself as a “seal,” having spent most of his life in the water.

That was the reason why, after he had fallen ill with cancer, his brother and four of his closest friends started the brand Buoy 4, which sells apparel emblazoned with a seal.

“When Kevin’s cancer got aggressive, he wasn’t able to be a mate on a boat so we said, why don’t we create a clothing line,” Scott Evans, his friend and “mission mover” at Buoy 4, said. 

As a means of paying tribute to Kevin, who passed in 2017, and to help clean the waters he loved, Buoy 4 teamed up with East Rockaway Kiwanis and Operation Splash to participate in “Operation Cleanup” on Aug. 28 along the waters off of Bay Park.

Rob Powers, a friend of Owens, said he pitched in on Sunday as a reminder of Kevin’s love for the water.

“Kevin meant a lot to me,” Powers said. “He was like a brother to me, I grew up with the Owens family and when I think of Kevin, I think of strength and his love for the water.”

According to its website, Operation Splash — which stands for “Stop Polluting, Littering and Save Harbors” — is a Freeport-based, volunteer organization dedicated to improving to quality of Long Island’s south shore bays, waterways, and beaches.

“It started in 1979 with a girl telling her dad the beach is dirty and he said, ‘so, clean it up,’” Ellen Lee, an operation splash volunteer, said. “East Rockaway is the farthest west we go and we go out east to Lindenhurst. It’s all nonprofit and we’ve picked up three million pounds of garbage now.”

A percentage of every sale at Buoy 4 gets donated back to help preserve local waterways. At the event, Operation Splash was presented with a check from Buoy 4 in the amount of $1,620.

“Operation Splash explained to us how they make money and clean the waterways and they agreed to come out on a Sunday to help us clean these waters,” East Rockaway Kiwanis President Michaelene Abbott-Cooper said. “Buoy 4 is an East Rockaway-based company with a great mission and they volunteered to be part of this project with us and we decided to put it out there for the kids and everyone to help us.”