Dean Otsuki — co-founder of the all-volunteer nonprofit Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawai‘i (B.E.A.C.H.) and an avid surfer and swimmer — died Dec. 8 after a 14-year battle with leukemia. He was 61.

Otsuki co-founded the nonprofit with his wife, Suzanne Frazer, in 2006, and spent the next 17 years walking beaches, removing debris of all sizes and organizing beach cleanups with other organizations.

They worked to involve people of all ages in collecting, sorting and researching the origin of marine debris. B.E.A.C.H. members also participated in community campaigns to encourage recycling by placing HI-5 recycle bins at beach parks, to ban smoking at beaches, ban outdoor balloon releases and ban the use of plastic shopping bags and polystyrene foam food containers.

Frazer remembered her husband as a man who gave “selfless service” to the cause he believed in.

“You don’t often find people who are that caring and that unselfish that they put doing good for everyone else above their own wants and desires,” she said. “His passion was surfing, he had huge passion for surfing, but in the last few years he didn’t go surfing because he was so busy doing the volunteer work for everyone’s benefit.”

Otsuki’s work was recognized with several public service awards and documented in numerous newspaper articles and television news stories. He also had a supporting role playing himself in the 2010 film “Bag It,” a documentary about the experiences of an Everyman who decides to stop using plastic shopping bags at the grocery store.

Dean Warren Otsuki was born in Gilroy, Calif., and grew up helping his parents at the family strawberry farm. He graduated from Salinas High School in Salinas, Calif., and continued his education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business.

Years later, Otsuki’s love of surfing brought him to Hawaii. He received an associate degree in graphic design from Honolulu Community College and used his training as an artist and photographer to publicize and promote his nonprofit’s campaigns.

“He always said, ‘You don’t compromise the environment,’” Frazer said, explaining that Otsuki considered a plastic bag ban that banned only one type of plastic bag, or setting a limit on the number of balloons that could be released at outdoor events rather than banning them entirely, were “compromises” that he did not accept.

“He’d say that if you’re going to protect the environment, you need an outright plastic shopping bag ban, and the same with balloon releases. Another thing he’d say – and this a quote from someone else – was, ‘Think globally, act locally.’”

Otsuki was diagnosed in 2009 with CMML2, a chronic form of leukemia. He was able to manage the disease, and continued to work, until mid-2023 when his CMML2 evolved into AML, an acute and aggressive form of the disease.

Otsuki is survived by Frazer, brother Jon Otsuki, sister-in-law Sharon Otsuki and numerous nieces and nephews.

A celebration of life was held Saturday at Kuhio Beach in Waikiki.