Team Leader: Koen Wouters

My name is Tyla (14 years old). I decided to clean Miller's Point as my term project after I went there and saw what a mess it had become. I’m a PADI Junior Open Water Diver and discovered that PADI does a specialty course in this type of thing.

The PADI Aware Course
This was a one-day course and wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was. I found most of the information to just be common sense. After the course I received my specialty certification in PADI Project Aware. I learnt about the 10 tips for divers to protect the ocean which just consisted of how to improve your carbon footprint, how you shouldn’t touch the sea life, giving back, how to be a role model, etc. I also learnt about how to adopt a dive site.

The Location
Miller's Point is located between Simon's Town and Cape Point. It’s a more rocky beach with not much sand but also has a slipway for boats. Along the way I discovered a lot of the trash I collected was fishing related. For example, we found a ton of fishing line.

The Mess
My attached presentation gives you an idea of the mess we found. And this doesn’t even begin to show how much trash we found but you’ll see more of it in a later slide.

The Beach Clean
This presentation also shows some photos of me cleaning the beach. Proof, you could say.
(Before and After photos)

The Haul
This is what we collected (Point out photos). In PADI Project Aware they encourage you not only to clean but to collect and load the data onto the website. Basically, documenting what you collected and how much it weighed. Was probably my least favorite part, I’m pretty sure we found a rotting fish head at some point which didn’t improve the experience.

The Damage
Let’s talk about the damage. If you didn’t know, all this waste is incredibly harmful to sea life. Something you might not have known; seals can only stay underwater for three minutes before they need to come to the surface for air, so something like fishing line or fishing net, when stuck in it, can keep them underwater and easily drown them. Bird life also eat the plastic thinking its food and essentially starve to death. These are just two examples of many.

Data Collected
One slide in my presentation reports what we collected over several weekends and how much it each weighed in its categories. In total we collected 44.1 kg. What was nice to see is that each time we returned, the cleaner it was. It would seem that my efforts had influenced the visitors and the area was treated less carelessly. I’m actually really proud of the work I’ve done cleaning Miller's Point as all of the trash we picked up would easily have landed in the ocean.

Now we are planning to dive Miller's Point and clean whatever did get in the sea and get it out.

Thank you for your attention, Tyla