Almost as interesting as scuba diving itself are the people who enthusiastically engage in the sport. Over the past 20 years, dive enthusiasts have done a truly incredible job of bringing worldwide attention to the importance of our planet’s oceans, and of how modern-day living and industrialization are negatively impacting them. This is especially true in regards to pollution and garbage that finds its way onto fragile reef systems. Previously we looked at how divers can affect the environment on every dive.

Apply Now: Heroes Needed

How to tackle the mountains of garbage in our seas has been a uniting force among the scuba diving community worldwide. Our oceans have always been a dumping ground for humankind, but with the advent of plastic and the exploding human population, the time to deal with the problem is now. Raising awareness will require lots of effort, money and most importantly, people to take an active role in helping to clean up our oceans. What kind of people? Heroes, people motivated by a deep desire to protect all forms of marine life, who will take active measures to clean garbage from the oceans and promote greater public awareness about the ultimate effects to the oceans’ of both personal litter and industrialized pollution.

Origins of Ocean Garbage

Preventing garbage from entering the oceans should be the main goal of any ocean hero, but the reality is painful. The practice of dumping garbage in the oceans, sea, lakes and rivers isn’t going to end anytime soon despite recent laws in a number of countries to limit the amount. And even if industrialized countries stop dumping their garbage in the oceans today, who will step forward to clean up the garbage that’s already there?

Cleaning our oceans will be a daunting task, and it will take the combined effort of many nations over many years to truly rectify the damage that pollution has already caused. Yet, despite how daunting the problem seems, if no one does anything, nothing will be done about it.

Without going into a detailed list of the sources of ocean garbage, it should shock anyone to discover how much garbage is already in the oceans now. According to the U.S. Coast Guard statistics, one of the main sources of garbage that reaches shallow shores is recreational boaters, offshore fishing boats, cruise ships and merchant vessels. And this is the type of garbage that scuba divers are mainly concerned about. The coast guard estimates at least one ton of trash enters the oceans everyday from recreational boaters alone. The amount rises exponentially if we garbage from larger vessels such as cruise ships.

Ask any scuba diver if they have seen garbage on the ocean floor and no doubt you will get a ‘yes.’ Can scuba divers actually make a difference in cleaning up the garbage in the ocean? Of course, a few heroic divers can’t save the world themselves, but there are more than 22 million PADI certified scuba divers in the world and growing, located in more than 120 countries. NAUI also has a few million certified divers around the world. These two organizations have the manpower to make a big difference in cleaning up shallow-water garbage. If, on average, each diver conducted two dives a year, picking up at least one pound of trash each dive, then PADI divers alone could easily pick up 44 million pounds of garbage (approximately 22,000 tons) a year.

One major obstacle is organizing the millions of scuba divers into participating in ocean-cleanup activities. The main idea is not to let a dive go to waste. One organization that has been very successful in promoting such ocean-cleanup activities is Project AWARE Dive Against Debris.

Dive Against Debris is by far the most organized group of scuba divers today who are diligently working to clean our oceans of garbage. The group’s success is due to their efficiency when it comes to instructing divers how to plan and promote cleanup events in their communities. Divers are asked to effectively log the types of garbage they collect and then to submit that information to Dive Against Debris so that it can be entered into a global database. This vital information is then used to support, develop and, ultimately, to implement new policies to curb ocean dumping.

If divers started organizing and collecting garbage on a regular basis during all dives it would make a noticeable difference — it’s a start in the right direction, anyway. Cleaning up the ocean “one dive at a time” is a great way we can individually contribute to saving our oceans. And, that’s heroic, because true heroism begins with each of our actions.