Canoers Aid Santa Monica Bay : Pollution: Westlake students plan to paddle 13 miles today in an Earth Day fund-raiser aimed at raising $3,000 to fight ocean pollution.

Disgusted by potato chip bags, beer bottles and other jetsam in the surf, 13 girls were to take to their outrigger canoes today to raise money to clean up Santa Monica Bay.

The group from Westlake School, collecting pledges for their Earth Day “paddle-a-thon” from Marina del Rey to the Santa Monica Pier, hope to turn over at least $3,000 to Heal the Bay, the Santa-Monica based organization that battles ocean pollution.

Katharine Kubichan, the student organizer of the Westlake School Paddlers-Heal the Bay, said she sees the effects of pollution during practice sessions with her club. “I saw floating diapers (and) a film of gasoline. Sometimes we flip, when the waves get too high, and you can feel the gas on your body and in your eyes.”

The students work out several times a week near Marina del Rey. Brown foam dots the beach at Basin D, where they launch the 400-pound, 40-foot fiberglass outrigger canoes. Past the slips of fishing and sailing boats, the water is a murky green. But the worst pollution, the girls say, is at the breakwater and a nearby storm drain about three miles from shore, where the water turns a “see-through-ish chocolate brown,” said Alison Sakulsky. The water is so thick with litter that “you can’t put your paddle in without picking it up,” said Amy Stephens.

“And there’ll be people fishing in the trash,” said senior Susie Worrall, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Worrall said she broke out in an itchy rash after being splashed by waves last weekend. The girls say they have often had cuts infected by the water.

“The odors are beyond gross,” said Kubichan, saying that the team jokes about hanging air-fresheners on the sleek canoes. “It really smells like an outhouse,” Worrall added.

Sewage, storm-water runoff and toxic chemicals have contaminated the bay on various occasions. Last July, world-class swimmer Pat Hines reported that she had diarrhea, vomiting, and high fever after training in the bay. Los Angeles city and county officials said that, except near storm drains, the bay is safe for swimming.

Sakulsky, a junior who has raced for Kai Nalu Outrigger Canoe Club in Marina del Rey, says she thinks San Diego and Santa Barbara waters are far cleaner than Santa Monica Bay. “Los Angeles is a much bigger city, but there’s no need for this much (trash),” she said.

This morning, the girls were to paddle in two canoes, yelling “hut!” and “ho!” from the marina to the Santa Monica Pier. The rhythmic paddling entails one girl in each canoe calling “hut” to warn the paddlers to switch their paddles to the other side and the paddlers replying with “ho.”

The farthest the team has paddled in one session is seven miles, said Coach Darlene Bible. Today’s trip, at 13 miles, is an upstream endeavor. The fund-raising paddle idea came from Kubichan, a water-sports buff who started canoeing for Kai Nalu last summer. “It was really relaxing to get away from college applications,” she said. Kubichan and other paddlers at Westlake recruited fellow students to pick up the Polynesian sport.

But “the water disgusted me,” Kubichan said. She helped activate the school’s Heal the Bay chapter, which sold T-shirts to raise money, spoke at school assemblies and wrote letters to protest toxic dumping.

This year, when Westlake seniors were given a new requirement to complete a community-minded senior project, Kubichan figured a “paddle-a-thon” would be the perfect way to have fun while doing good. Along the way, she’s become inspired to major in marine biology in college, and the paddling event has become the senior project of five other students as well.

The girls wrote and mailed press releases and hung posters around the marina. Senior Amy Stephens designed the team logo of paddlers and a towering wave, which the girls silk-screened onto fluorescent lime-green tank tops.

Collecting money around the environmentally aware and politically liberal Westside was a breeze, said Lisa Gundy, a junior. Last week she raised $250 from business associates of her father, who owns a real estate firm in Santa Monica. “He works on 2nd Street, a block from the ocean. Everyone there is really into the ocean. They live in Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Santa Monica--they’re really into the environment.”

Knocking on doors in Westwood over spring break, seniors Alex Rosati and Susan Son garnered $100 in an hour. “People with nice cars and kids always give” because their children will probably be doing the same in a few years for Girls Scouts and Cub Scouts, Rosati said.

They got one hostile response. “One lady said, ‘Why don’t you go to Santa Monica? They should clean up their own bay,’ ” Rosati recalled, saying that she and Son were too stunned to answer on the spot.

Senior Sharon Moses offered them a reply: “It’s everyone’s beach.”