Local clean up for global change

Not only are we an enthusiastic bunch of divers, freedivers and swimmers at fourth element, but we also share a deep passion for taking care of our environment. Based in Cornwall, the south west tip of the UK, we are lucky to be surrounded by ocean that is brilliant for diving, with clear (if cold!) water, interesting sea life and even wrecks to explore.

Trash has become a big problem for our oceans, it threatens life both human and animal, polluting habitats and destroying livelihoods. A group of our staff joined an event planned by GUE and Ghost Diving Global on June 5th for a worldwide aquatic clean-up to honour World Oceans Day. We decided to undertake both a beach clean and a dive in order to clean up our local environment.

Mullion Cove, a beauty spot and our local dive site, nestles into the cliffs of the Lizard Peninsula, the southernmost point of Britain which juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. A quaint fishing village, this isn’t your usual hot spot for tons of trash left by tourists. A first glance the area looks rubbish-free but we were quite surprised by the amount we found washed up on the shoreline; bottles, fabric scraps and hundreds of bits of plastic tangled in seaweed and embedded in the pebbled beach.

Always take a handy debris bag with you on walks and see how much you can collect.

We used litter pickers kindly gifted to us by Waterhaul – an innovation company doing great things for the environment. These pickers are made with recycled single-use facemasks; something that has added a huge amount of additional waste to our environment in the past year. You can find more about them and get yours here.

Time for the dive.

We kitted up and braced ourselves to find a similar amount of rubbish in the water, we’d been told by locals there were ghost fishing nets around too. But we were pleasantly surprised to find only a bottle and an empty bacon packet floating around! So instead we enjoyed the white sandy plains and kelp forests that the bay boasts (along with a bit of not-so-nice swell swishing up back and forth!).

It’s our responsibility as divers, freedivers and swimmers, to take care of the oceans that give us so much joy back in return. We see the beauty, and the devastation, more clearly than anyone else.

Even if you missed the event this weekend, there’s no bad time to go on a clean-up mission. Arm your buddies with a debris bag and get down to your local water way, ask locals to advise on any particularly bad areas that are known about, such as fishing line trapped in underwater rocks. To get those who don’t dive involved, you can also clean-up on land. Make it a fun activity with the kids by challenging them to see who can fill their bag up first or find the largest piece of rubbish. Even the most begrudging of friends can be enticed to pick up some trash with the promise of the pub at the end…We know it works for us…