On a recent Sunday afternoon, divers arrived at a strip of fine sand along the farthest edge of the water in New York City. Carrying gas bottles on their backs, they waded into the sea, entering a land environment that was far different from the usual concrete, traffic and trash-strewn sidewalks.
Horseshoe crabs and other crustaceans crawl along the ocean floor, which is studded with barnacles and coral colonies. Spiny-finned sea robins, snakehead fish and wayward angelfish swim in dark seas tinted green by algae.
Not everything is pretty. Plastic bottles, candy wrappers and miles of fishing line drift with the tides, endangering marine life.
Undersea debris is not always visible from the coast. But Nicole Zelek, founder of the dive school SuperDive, has long been worried about the problem, and she started a monthly cleanup four years ago on this cove in the Far Rockaway neighborhood, where New York City meets the Atlantic Ocean. 4 miles (6.4 km) ) south of John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.
A disposable culture of single-use plastics and other difficult-to-biodegrade materials has developed polluting the world’s waters For decades, it has posed a threat to marine life such as seals and seabirds.
Small groups like Zelek have been working to undo some of the damage as part of the DIVERS-ity initiative, which aims to promote inclusivity in the sport.
“Every month we give out a prize for the weirdest discovery,” she said. Zelek speculates that goat skulls occasionally appear among them, possibly as part of some ritual.
“The best discovery ever was a real ATM machine. Unfortunately, it was empty,” she said.
On a Sunday in late summer, the divers pulled up not much, but clumps of fishing line unraveled from underwater objects. What the diver couldn’t pull apart with his hands was cut off with scissors.
“Unfortunately, large numbers of crabs and horseshoe crab – They were threatened – they got tangled in fishing lines and died,” Zelek said.
although More ambitious projects Nick Maros, vice president of environmental protection at the Ocean Conservancy, said small-scale coastal cleanups like Zelek’s are removing large accumulations of floating debris in deeper waters and are an important part of the fight against ocean pollution.
“The science is very clear, that’s the solution to the global plastic pollution crisis,” he said. “We have to do it all.”
Each September, the reserve hosts a month-long international coastal cleanup. Since its launch nearly four decades ago, the cleanup has recovered approximately 400 million pounds (181.4 million kilograms) of trash from coastal areas around the world.
Malos said the best way to stop plastic from entering the ocean is to reduce the world’s reliance on plastic, especially in consumer packaging. But manual cleaning is the least expensive of all cleaning methods.
By 2025, approximately 250 million tons (226.7 million metric tons) of plastic will have entered our lives. oceanThat’s according to the PADI AWARE Foundation, a conservation organization that sponsors a global program called “Dive Against Debris.”
The program invites what organizers call “citizen scientists” to survey their dive sites to help catalog the myriad items that don’t belong in oceans, lakes and other bodies of water. According to the organization, more than 90,000 participants conducted more than 21,000 such surveys and removed 2.2 million pieces of trash, large and small.
Zelek and her fellow divers contributed their findings to the project.
Removing surface debris with a rake may be easy, but the task underwater is more challenging. Over the years, layers of monofilament fishing line have accumulated. Until a few years ago, no one had dug out fishing lines, hooks and sinkers.
If untied, one pound of medium-weight fishing line can stretch to a little over 4 miles (6.4 kilometers). No one knows how many miles of fishing line remain at the bottom of the channel.
“It’s these little things that really start to add up and become a bigger and bigger problem,” said Tanasia Swift, who has been with the organization for a year and works as a co-founder of a company dedicated to restoring New York City. Environmental nonprofit work for water health.
“If we see anything that doesn’t belong in the water, we take it out,” she said.
While drivers work, fishermen cast their rods from ledges on the city’s concrete moorings. The beach is mostly frequented by residents living nearby.
One such resident is Raquel Gonzalez, who has been coming to the beach for years. The same Sunday the divers were there, she and a neighbor brought in the rake.
“It needs a lot of cleanup here. No one here is doing any cleanup. We have to clean it up ourselves,” she said.
“I love this place and I love scuba divers,” Gonzalez said. “Look at all the good people here.”
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Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio, a volunteer on the scuba team reporting on this report, contributed.
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