Big Blue held another clean up dive along the seafront on Saturday 8th Nov.  Despite having done several clean up dives in this area in the last couple of years we are still finding a lot of rubbish.  This time 10 divers, diving for just under an hour, removed 260kg of rubbish. Along the wall at the seafront area our volunteer divers brought up plastic food wrappers, plastic bags, plastic cutlery and plates, clothing, shoes and various other items. These items could have been thrown into the sea but the majority of them were probably dropped onto the street in Port Vila town centre and were washed into the sea via the storm drains.  Most of the plastics and other waste that ends up in the sea comes from the land. Once in the sea rubbish can pollute, smother and kill marine life and seriously damage the marine ecosystems that we rely on as a food source, for storm protection and as a tourist attraction.  If we want to protect our fragile marine life them everybody must help by not littering and keeping our streets and therefore the storm drains free from rubbish.

The most numerous items we collected were bottles and cans: 174 bottles and 131 cans. Theses were found along the sea wall as well as a little further out where the yachts moor at anchor. We found three coke bottles and some empty ammunition shells from WWII as well. It appears that in the intervening 70 years since world War II visiting boats to Port Vila harbour have not change their waste disposal habits very much and bottles and cans are still ending up over the side of the boat in the sea.

Big Blue would like to say a big thank you to our volunteer divers: Angie, Gordon, Russell, Jonathan, Lisa, JP, Dorina, Sam and Robert and to Gorgina for help on shore as well as Big Blue Staff. Big Blue organises a clean up dive once a quarter and they are always well supported by the diving community in Port Vila. But our efforts are just a small drop in our every increasingly polluted oceans and will never solve the problem of marine debris. The only way to stop our seas becoming clogged up and sick from all the rubbish that ends up there is to stop it entering the sea in the first place.