Sunday 22nd April was Earth Day and the focus this year was to reduce plastic usage and definitely plastic wasteage!
It seemed like a good excuse to organise another clean up dive for the club and with some keen divers in tow we headed to Shark Bay in Wellington Harbour where we knew we would find a large number of bottles & we did! 98 mostly intact bottles in fact along with 121 glass fragments – mostly broken bottles.
We also found 107 other items including several golf balls (about to be reused by one of our divers), a pair of Oakley sunglasses (also taken home to be cleaned and reused), ~70 pieces of plastic including bags and small fragments, tin and aluminium cans and an old boot far to gone to be repurposed!
Everyone pitched in even those that hadn’t dived were roped in to help decritter the debris and several crabs, sea stars, chitins and even 2 octopus were returned to the ocean.
After all that hard work – diving – cleaning – counting – and then bagging & carrying the debris up to the bins meant a well deserved drink was on the cards so we headed over to the Gasworks in Miramar for some fries, a drink and a chat.
Thanks to our divers and surface crew for making Earth Day 2018 both a successful clean up event but also a fun day out.
Claire
PS: It was great to arrive at the pub and see the messages are getting out to the public!
