Forget the coral reefs, sunken ships and exotic marine life, B.C. scuba diver Henry Wang is only interested in one thing: Garbage.
Wang has been diving in bodies of water around the Lower Mainland for more than a decade on the hunt for trash, and estimates in that time he’s pulled up more than 27,000 kilograms (59,000 pounds) of refuse.
On Monday, he was at Abbotsford’s Albert Dyck Park, where he said he pulled up more than 30 kilograms (67 pounds) of garbage.
“All of these things are not supposed to be in the water column and they do degrade over time,” he told Global News. “They are not supposed to be in the water, so it’s a good idea to take them out.”
Wang got into scuba diving in 2004, and quickly levelled up his skills, taking on cave diving and eventually operating a dive shop.
He sold the shop in 2013, around the same time one of his dive partners asked if he wanted to start exploring lakes.
On a dive trip to Buntzen Lake in Anmore, the realized the body of water was packed with garbage. They came back with more gear, and pulled out an estimated 680 kilograms (1,500 pounds) of trash.
In the decade since, he estimates he and his friends have done close to 250 cleanup dives, and recovered everything from run of the mill trash like beer cans and lighters to a $3,000 boat propeller and a 110-year-old piece of logging equipment.
So what keeps him going?
“It is a selfish reason in the sense that this type of diving, the difficulties I encounter, the challenges I encounter does fascinate me and allow me to continue my pursuit of harder and harder and more challenging diving,” he said.
But it’s not just the challenge. Wang said he also feels personally responsible to use his advanced skills to clean up his community.
“If you have the capability, then you have the responsibility to do something about any kind of problem,” he said.
“Going into a lake and using my scuba diving skills to remove trash isn’t something that everybody can do, which means that if I have the ability then I have the responsibility to act.”
While Wang and his dive partners do accept donations to cover the cost of gas and coffee, for the most part the endeavour is purely a volunteer operation.
And while he keeps a small number of items to display at home and to use for show-and-tell with students, the dives are less about what he recovers than the experience of doing it.
“One crazy thing always gets replaced by the next crazy thing,” he said.
“What I really remember most about my diving missions are the good times I spend with my friends.”
— with files from Paul Johnson