On Tuesday 13th August 2013, Brendon and Liz from Shark Guardian joined the big Go Eco Phuket clean up in Phuket, Thailand. With our registered Shark Guardian Dive Centre, Scuba Cat Diving, we dived 2 sites at Ratcha Nai. Our tasks were to replace a mooring line and pick up marine debris. Marine debris is the rubbish of our everyday lives that makes its way in to our oceans. Every year thousands of marine animals and birds are killed because of debris and it chokes coral reefs and devastates critical environments. Taking part in a clean up is important for our oceans and marine environments - a clean healthy, ocean means a clean, healthy planet.
The Important need to clean up our oceans
Nearly 80% of all marine debris is plastic. In some parts of the ocean plastic outweighs plankton 6:1! There are also the so called 'ghost nets' (fishing nets left or lost in the ocean by fishermen) and lost fishing lines and ropes that kill animals due to entanglement or ingestion. This is the sad reality and why an event such as this, to clean up as much trash from the ocean as possible in one day, is so very important for ocean conservation.
Big Phuket Clean Up
The clean up event was organised by Go Eco Phuket with support from the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources and local government bodies. It was the 2nd yearly event of this clean up on a large scale and creates awareness of the importance of keeping Phuket’s marine and coastal ecosystems clean and debris-free. Shark Guardian were happy to help Scuba Cat's dive team and volunteers, collecting more than 70Kg of trash and setting some new mooring lines.
A successful day
On the day around 1,500 volunteers successfully collected a total of 4,356 kilograms of debris from Ratcha Yai which is a popular diving destination of Phuket. We, along with the other dive and snorkel volunteers found the debris was mostly consisting of ghost nets as well as tyres, cans and bottles. The recorded data has been submitted to the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources for their own records and also to Project Aware. The important data is used bu governments to drive changes in infrastructure and waste management policies at all levels .
Thanks again to Scuba Cat for their enthusiasm and support on this day. And to Martin Edwards for his fabulous underwater photographs!