Experienced by Kimatni D. Rawlins
A five-year pact with the sea grows extensions in Southern California: part water, part coral, entirely alive.
Somewhere off Catalina Island, a fishing boat named Midnight Hour has slept on the seafloor for years, with its nets still hunting sea life long after the hands that cast them let go. These ghost nets, as divers call them (nylon phantoms that strangle without malice), are indifferent machines of accidental cruelty. However, this summer Hyundai Motor Company and Healthy Seas sent divers deep down below to end the haunting. Thus, the road toward ocean emancipation has begun.
From Waste to Wear, From Pollution to Possibility
Recently, I headed to Huntington State Beach to join Hyundai Hope employee volunteers and their families in cleaning up the beach while learning about community impact regarding water preservation. The mission to protect the ocean is the latest stage in an expanding, five-year partnership between Hyundai Hope and Healthy Seas, the global nonprofit devoted to pulling marine litter from the world’s waters and stitching the wounds shut. What began in 2021 as a European experiment has metastasized, in the best sense of the word, into a ten-country operation recovering more than 320 tons of ocean debris.
The U.S. chapter, launched in 2022, has now evolved into From Sea to Shore: a Southern California initiative that fuses underwater salvage, employee sweat equity, and childlike curiosity into a single ecosystem. Specifically, Ghost Diving USA specialists descend near Catalina to cut nets from wreckages and seabeds. Hyundai’s own workforce traded desks for sand at Huntington State Beach for a few hours, collecting discarded debris, trash, and lost valuables in the oldest form of activism there is. It was definitely satisfying helping the cause. Moreover, as a vegan under the nickname Vegan Cyborg, I feel I am equally contributing to conservation efforts.
Every Trip of Change Begins at Sea
Healthy Seas moves on three currents: cleanup, education, and prevention, each pulling in the same direction against the tide of marine litter. Since 2013, its divers, educators, coastal communities, and maritime partners have hauled 1,309 tons of fishing nets and ocean debris back onto dry land, proving that a philanthropic foundation can out-swim a crisis one net at a time. Alongside 150 partners and nearly 550 volunteers, Healthy Seas treats the circular economy as a practice of giving recovered nylon a second act as new material rather than a permanent resident of the seafloor.
“The health of our oceans depends on the actions we take today and the solutions we build for the future. Through our ongoing partnership with Healthy Seas, we are helping drive environmental remediation by recovering and repurposing waste to protect ecosystems and reduce environmental impact.” – Randy Parker, President and CEO, Hyundai Motor North America.
Waste, Reborn: The ECONYL Journey
What happens to a ghost net once it’s caught? It doesn’t die twice. Suitable nylon pulled from these nets, aquaculture waste, and industrial scrap alike enters a regeneration process called ECONYL, emerging as first-grade nylon yarn that’s chemically indistinguishable from anything drilled from the earth. From there, the yarn goes wherever textiles go, such as into clothing, into carpet, and full circle into floor mats for Hyundai vehicles, meaning a net that previously threatened a sea turtle might eventually live under someone’s feet on a morning commute. Call it reincarnation with a supply chain.
“Continuing our partnership with Hyundai Motor North America in California is especially meaningful because it allows us to build consistency, not only through clean-up action, but also through education and awareness. With From Sea to Shore, we are connecting different parts of the same story: removing litter from the coast, recovering ghost fishing gear from the ocean, and inspiring children to understand and protect marine life.” — Veronika Mikos, Director, Healthy Seas.
Ocean Heroes in the Making: The STEAM Project
A few miles inland the work took a different shape. At the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley’s Pacific Life Foundation Branch, Hyundai Hope and Healthy Seas hosted a STEAM project built for minds still forming their first ideas about the sea. The kids learned that the ocean isn’t one blue expanse but five oceans and seven distinct seas, and that a full truckload of plastic ends up in that water every single minute.
Asked how they could help, the answers came back in marker and crayon rather than confusing language: pick up the trash, recycle, vacuum the ocean floor clean, eat healthy. The lesson then became an art project as each child chose a creature to bring to life, such as a sea turtle, a shark, a whale, or a seahorse, ultimately presenting their ocean guardian to the group. It reads on paper like a craft table. The afternoon theme was also the exact mission the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley has held since its founding: to encourage and enable the healthy development of all young people, especially those who need it most, so they can fulfill their potential as caring, responsible, and productive members of the community. An Ocean Hero, it turns out, is just that mission wearing a different mask.
The Ride: 2026 Palisade XRT Pro
Getting around the various events I participated in required the perfect, eco-friendly machine. A 2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT Pro carried us along the coast between missions — Creamy White Pearl outside, gray-and-navy Nappa leather within, its 2.5-liter turbocharged hybrid engine and HTRAC all-wheel drive producing 329 horsepower — effortlessly and comfortably. Rated for up to 630 miles of range, the three-row flagship ferried us from Huntington Beach to Long Beach with grace and style, with the dual 12.3-inch curved screens radiating softly on the dash the entire way. Fitting, somehow, that the vehicle built to move a family through the world drove just as easily toward the work of saving it.
The Power of Purpose
Conservation done right is an ongoing process. Grown hands hauling nets from a wreck sixty feet down and small hands rendering a whale with markers are performing the same essential task. This is proof that protecting the ocean is a community effort, not a corporate line item to check off once a year. When employees, volunteers, and children share a shoreline, the lesson compounds in both directions: adults act out what stewardship looks like in practice, while children reflect on what’s all worth it, and somewhere in that exchange, one generation quietly recruits the next without either noticing the recruitment tactic.
It’s a fitting parallel, too. Ecosystems survive on interdependence: coral needs fish, fish need currents, and currents need the coast. Human community works the same way once you let it: a diver, a beachcomber, and a nine-year-old with a vision, in their own right, tending the same reef. Thankfully, we have Hyundai Hope to the rescue!
Hyundai Hope Goals and Ideologies
Hyundai Hope is the human circuitry behind Progress for Humanity, the part of the machine built to care rather than convey. Through Hyundai Motor North America, it channels time and resources toward nonprofits standing guard over individual health and safety, wiring wellbeing straight into the communities it touches. Call it a corporate heartbeat: mechanical in structure, entirely organic in meaning. I thoroughly enjoy myself when volunteering with Hyundai Hope initiatives because there is no greater cause than giving back to society, fostering sisterhood and brotherhood, and supporting our youth, who will soon become our thought leaders. Learn more at www.hyundaihope.com.
