Project Aware Cleanup Day

On Saturday, 21 September 2019, New Dimension Scuba organised a local clean-up of Sirens Bay,Saint Paul’s, Malta, in collaboration with Project Aware Cleanup Day (Week).

Bringing together volunteers from locals, to random by-passers that were all interested in helping and contributing to the clean up. This event managed to collect hundreds of kg’s of trash.

The event was a huge success.

Assuming we would have 4 helpers and 1 leader, to having 10 volunteer divers, 4 snorkelers, 2 surface support dividers, bystanders, 2 instructors and 1 dive master. We were truly happy to see how many Maltese locals were involved and how shocked they were to see what was happening below the surface.

The morning started off with Amy giving the group an introduction and briefing about how the day will run.

By 10:00 am, all divers were dressed and giant striding into the ocean with their ‘Dive Against Debris’ mesh bags and bight luminescent gloves.

2 groups set off in search of ‘whatever they could find’ within the no visibility conditions. 45 minutes later, all divers surfaced with some divers who were laughing at the items they collected and the others who were grunting because their mesh bags were rather heavy….

Once everyone was out of the water, the team divided all the rubbish and sorted it out into piles for data collection. Items such as sun bathing loungers, plastic chairs, tires, umbrellas, metal piping, cement blocks etc was lifted using mesh bags and lift bags.

Once all the rubbish was counted and entered onto the Data Card, the large piles were placed into recycling bags, and mixed waste bags to be discarded at the local Waste Serve Recycling Distributor in Malta.

After the first dive, everyone was starving and opted to refuel at the local restaurant right opposite the dive center. We couldn’t believe how an event like this could bring strangers together that would end up becoming friends and dive buddies.

The 2nd and final dive was the biggest of the two. The groups were ready and set off to bring back as much as possible and the 1 group came back with a lift back with 8 full mesh bags attached.

After everyone had collected their debris filled mesh bags, distributed them into their allocated piles, counted and bagged into recyclable bags, it was time to cleanup the area, de-kit and say our goodbyes.

On behalf of the team at New Dimension Scuba, we would like to thank all those who contributed to the event whether on land or in the water. Without your help, the bay would still have tons of rubbish accumulating and would never be retrieved.

Total Debris collected:

300 kg of rubbish

500 Plastic Items

50 kg of Cloth Materials

1900 pieces of debris