The weather was a bit rough in the morning, but nothing to prevent us from going out diving. No, the weather was not our main cause of concern, it was an entirely different issue, a quite unnatural and manmade one, and it was the debris covering the beautiful historic wreck we were going to dive at.

This was not any usual dive though, this was a specific project AWARE event dive where we were hoping to clean up quite a bit of that debris off of our beloved dive site which is also home to countless amounts of aquatic life. We advertised the event and consulted with project AWARE staff who provided us with valuable support and expert advice to do organise it. With people signing up and our boat being at full capacity with divers who are particularly experienced and properly equipped, we were ready to go!

You see, the debris we wanted to collect was not any normal type of debris, it was fishing nets. Massive amounts of fishing nets at that, which have collected layer over layer over the wreck, creating a labyrinth of nets which was equally dangerous for the coral life growing on the wreck, the aquatic life inhabiting it, as well as divers! That is why the dive was filled with divers who were all at least Advanced Open Waters with a Search And Recovery Specialty, highlighting the value of PADI continuing education, seeing as even though we had many more eager participants, the nature of this noble dive required special knowledge and diving skills.

We went out and formed 7 buddy teams, each equipped with a lift bag with a lifting capacity of 25 Kg./50 Lbs. and we were able to retrieve up to 140 kgs. of fishing nets that surrounded the wreck with tremendous effort in a dive that lasted nearly an hour, all of which was consumed with cutting and gathering the nets as carefully as possible as to not harm the marine life and damage the sensitive wreck.

It was, in summary, an amazing day! We felt very accomplished and the amount of good we achieved was overwhelming. A whopping 140 kgs.! Not in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine retrieving that much debris in one dive. Unfortunately, our excitement was somewhat short lived, once we realised that despite our efforts, the amount we retrieved was but a portion of what was in this dive site alone, let alone the oceans around us! However, that notion also filled us with a renewed inspiration to come back and clean up this wreck time and time again, and be active members in the fight against marine debris, until we hopefully get our oceans back to their original pristine condition for future generations one day!