Cleaning Up Cleveland’s Waters: Teens Making Waves
Tuesday was their last day of school, but Cleveland high schoolers Joshua Dannison and John Vera were not at their desks.
They were aboard a small barge called Jetsam out on Lake Erie, using long poles with nets to pull out trash from the water right by Huntington Bank Field and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Vera described some of what they found.
“There’s some chip bags, some seagrass, a bunch of logs, some other trash,” he said, pointing to items they’d tossed into a cloth dumpster on the boat, or “Bagster.”
Dannison said sometimes they find what you’d expect. Sometimes they get a surprise.
“My second day here, it was just like full of trash here (in the harbor), and apparently the storm had dropped off a bucket full of snakes…. just slithering around everywhere,” he explained.
The paid internships come through a partnership between the Port of Cleveland and Argonaut, the nonprofit that sponsors Davis Aerospace & Maritime High School, where both boys study. Students there don’t just learn in classrooms—they also get boating licenses, practice operating cranes and Bobcats on barges, and even assist the U.S. Coast Guard.
Their work matters. Every year, the student crews on the barges Flotsam and Jetsam remove more than 300,000 pounds of trash from Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. That helps freighters keep moving, protects wildlife, and improves the health of the ecosystem.
One of their mentors, Captain Sam Landgraf, the first-ever female captain of Jetsam, says the students will finish the summer ready to run machinery that most adults never touch. That’s real-world experience they can carry into future careers in engineering, boating, or other industries.
Not only are the students cleaning waterways, but they’re also learning how to fight for their education. Dannison joined classmates in protesting when the district tried to shorten Davis’s school year, arguing that extra time was needed for maritime training.
For Dannison, it’s not all hard work. “It’s pretty relaxing, especially on the barge. And then sometimes if we’re leaving, once we’re leaving Lake Erie… we pick up speed, we get to have that wake, it starts jumping a little bit. That’s the more exciting part.”
I think what Joshua, John, and their classmates are doing is awesome. Not only are they helping their city and environment, but they’re also gaining skills that could launch them into great careers. It shows that teens can make a big difference—even in something as huge as cleaning up a river that once caught on fire!
Source:
- https://youtu.be/4n6jqByOn0I?si=HOT0_mdqpgVLoCKC
- https://www.ideastream.org/education/2025-06-23/these-cleveland-students-summer-job-clean-up-the-cuyahoga-river-and-lake-erie
- https://app.pictory.ai/
- https://chatgpt.com/
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