During a Search & Recovery instructor specialty at Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui in Thailand, PADI Platinum Course Director Camille Lemmens and his student Claire Whitfeild took the opportuniy to do a bit of a clean up as well.

The amount of garbage deposited in front of Chaweng Beach is staggering and includes lots of plastic parts from all the fireworks that are part of Chaweng's sky each night, iron frames from the 'good luck' hot air balloons, dozen of fake sun glasses, clothing, plastic and glass bottles, used tires, toys, dive and snorkel masks, fishing nets, ropes and so on.

Although I enjoy diving on top of the garbage, looking for finds and partly cleaning up, it's rather depressing to see the sheer amount of gargbage that is out there.

Over the years I lifted various kilos of garbage out of the ocean here at Chaweng beach, during clean up actions but mostly during the Search & Recovery instructor speicalties that I taught here.

Today was another effort and with the two of us we managed to lift another couple of kilos of garbage out of the ocean, including over a dozen dive and snorkel masks, plastic and glass bottles, parts of plastic beach chairs, a tire, various sunglasses, various pieces of clothing and plenty of small plastic parts.