On September 19th, 38 UCT divers took to the waters at False Bay Yacht Club and joined in on the International Coastal Clean-up Day. The Clean Diver event saw ten black bags of debris (containing cans, buoys, pliers, and other interesting objects) being removed from the ocean in an UCT Underwater Club initiative to help raise awareness for the environment as well as funds for our Marine Explorers Programme and the NSRI.   

The Clean Diver event is run annually on International Coastal Clean-up Day where people from all over South Africa head to our beaches and waters to remove all the debris that they can possibly find. This initiative acts as a means to educate locals about the amount of rubbish that is put into the ocean and hopes to get everyone to understand the impact that this rubbish has on the marine environment and its organisms.  

Not only is this event of importance to the club as a fund raiser and community initiative but the clean-up provides us with the perfect opportunity to keep our weekend playground in pristine condition. The clean-up is conducted in an area where we constantly find ourselves diving and provides the False Bay fishermen and sailors with the opportunity to understand the importance of our oceans.  

This provides many of the bystanders the perfect opportunity to see how the “small” amount of debris, which is often added to the ocean, can quickly build up and the influence that it has on the marine environment. It was amazing to see how the debris that was collected by the divers had begun to form part of the underwater habitat. In some circumstances some of the debris had to be returned to the ocean as little communities had begun to form on what had been collected.