Dozens of volunteer divers gathered at the Gord Downie Pier in Kingston, Ont., on the weekend to clean up the lake floor.
Within an hour, hundreds of pounds of debris were collected.
“We’ve got people on the shore who are going to help lift things up,” said Dave Green, activities director for the CFB Kingston Dolphin Scuba Club, which sponsored the dive.
“We’ll then tag it and bag it all and we’ll bring it off to the Kingston garbage centre.”
Green helped put together the cleanup on Saturday morning.
“We dive in Kingston a couple times a week with the club and have different locations we want to go,” Green said. “And this being a very visible location in Kingston where a lot of people generally are, we wanted to come out and clean up the area. Get a bit of the trash off the bottom and beautify the underwater environment.”
About 50 volunteer divers — many from the Kingston area, along with several from Quebec — took part.
Greg Weiss, a dive instructor from Ottawa, said it’s amazing what you’ll find below the surface.
“Every year, our divers get back in the water from a long winter excited to get diving. And we find a lot of debris in the water, stuff that has been there for years, stuff that’s new,” Weiss said. “Bicycles, grocery carts, cans, bottles, plastics.”
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This is the first time in recent memory that a cleanup like this has happened in Kingston, but similar events are going on all over the world.
“Marine debris is a big problem for marine life,” Weiss said. “Marine life is dying constantly because of things like plastics, beer can six-pack holders, bottles, cans. All that kind of stuff.
“In warm-water environments, turtles and sea creatures, birds are constantly found with marine debris in their stomachs.”
Within minutes of diving in, Weiss picked a complete bicycle off the lake floor.
According to the Alliance for the Great Lakes, in 2017, volunteers collected more than 16 tonnes of plastic in beach cleanups.
Off the Gord Downie Pier, divers found and rolled a large truck tire out of the water onto the beach.
In less than an hour, drivers pulled more than 340 pounds of steel, piping, bottles and even a metal chair frame out of the water, metres below where thousands swim every summer.
Illegal dumping of any kind in the Kingston carries a fine of up to $5,000.
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