But last week when I dived Wakatobi - a marine park comprising four islands off South East Sulawesi, Indonesia - too often it was less scuba with sea creatures and more swimming with plastic. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video This was my fourth time diving in Indonesia, which in my limited scuba diving experience boasts some of the best reefs in the world, from remote Raja Ampat near West Papua which feels like a prehistoric edge of the world to the swirling currents that bring the manta ray to Komodo, home to the famous dinosaur-like dragons. And this time it was at times heartbreaking. 15-minute boat rides to dive sites were journeys cutting through plastic seas. Household garbage floated across the surface and it was everywhere underwater too. Plastic pollution pervaded every one of the 17 dives I undertook in the week. Sometimes it was wrapped around a piece of coral, other times it was "food" for the fish nipping at it eagerly. As I tried to film turtles and some of my favourite fish, the plastic floated right into me and my camera.

From the plastic barcode stickers used by airlines to tag our checked luggage, to chip packets and bottle lids, there was more rubbish than we divers could collect and place in the pockets of our diving BCDs (Buoyancy Control Devices). Onshore, at our eco-resort it was worse. Our dive guides told us that every year for three months the currents wash plastic swamps onto what should be a pristine, post-card quality beach, boasting fine white sand and teal blue water. As we headed for our dives at 7am, staff were clearing the beach of its waste, filling giant bags with plastic but keeping the beach clean was an almost impossible task. Dive guides with the afternoon free would take a tank and spend hours clearing the shallows of the house reef, dragging up bag after bag of rubbish that would eventually be burned. Repeatedly, within hours the beach would be clogged back up again. It is tempting to dismiss plastic pollution in developing countries as a problem that will fix itself as the country grows wealthier but already China has said it no longer wants to accepts the West's plastics for recycling. This is causing major problems in Australia and the United Kingdom.

And as David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II has shown us what ends up in our oceans, even if far away, has real local consequences. Just this week, tests conducted on bottled water from a multitude of countries showed microplastic particles in every single brand analysed. A report by the McKinsey Centre for Business and Environment for Ocean Conservancy found the majority of plastic enters the ocean from a small geographic area and that over half comes from just five rapidly growing economies—China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – that is, from countries on Australia’s doorstop. Indonesia is second only to China as the biggest dumper of plastic in the ocean. Dive guides at Wakatobi said much of Indonesia's problem was that children were never taught at school about the consequences of littering and there are poor government waste management programs. As a result, adults and children alike see waterways as rubbish bins. Staff at the eco-resort were proud of their personal efforts in trying to deal with the plastic that washed up on their sands and believed small actions like swapping plastic straws for washable and reusable glass ones did make some difference.

But a global effort is required. And as the Bali-based NGO Rivers, Oceans, Lakes, Ecology Foundation (ROLE) points out, Australians should feel a keen interest in Indonesia’s treatment of its rubbish. “Indonesia produces around 64 million tons of waste per year,” the organisation says. “Approximately 50 per cent of this reaches landfill sites, the rest is either burnt or illegally dumped and flows into the ocean ... This massive volume of waste is now covering Australia’s northern beaches.” Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video