Beach Clean up (above and below)

[seattlepaul1975]

My wife and I were walking around Discovery Park a couple of weekends ago and we started to pick up some of the trash that we were seeing around the beach. We had people saying "thanks" and things like that. We started talking to each other about what if we tried to do a "above and below" clean up of a beach area, get some people that want to do beach area and some people that would want to dive and do it in that same spot.

We both know it won't clean it all up, but it takes small impacts from lots of people to make a difference.

What do people think of the idea?
What would be a good spot to do it at?

[CaptnJack]

You might want to consider first defining "trash". Most people know it when they see it, but you'd be surprised how different people can disagree about whether a bottle (with or without a resident critter) or an old toilet is or isn't trash worthy of removal. In a lot of cases "trash" depends on the dive site.

[seattlepaul1975]

Totally agree with you. The beach trash was things like Styrofoam and other garbage we were finding.

[dwashbur]

A bunch of us tried something like this at Les Davis several years ago. It went pretty well, and we collected a lot of below-water crap like food wrappers and such. Stuff that looked habitable, such as bottles or cans, we left there. So I guess our definition of "trash" included "not possible to use as habitat." For whatever it's worth.

[WylerBear]

You can also do what I do and encourage others to do the same. Take a goody bag on all your dives and pick up at least 2 pieces of trash on every dive. I've been doing this for a long while now and several of my dive buddies now do the same thing. Like you said, we can each do a little bit. If enough of us do that, it will make a difference.

[wetb4Igetinthewater]

I'm up for this.

My impression is it is most important to pick up anything that is plastic, as it breaks apart and gets eaten by birds and fish. My criteria for trash is: would anything eat this? And is this the only piece of garbage here? I picked up a beer can while diving off Playa del Carmen a few weeks ago, and also jumped out of the boat to get a piece of plastic.

I know I can't clean up the Sound by myself. But if I can prevent one bird or fish from eating a bottle cap....