A Guinness World Record has been broken when 633 scuba divers scooped up trash from the ocean floor near the Deerfield Beach International Fishing Pier, reported local Florida newspaper The Sun Sentinel. The previous record for the most divers taking part in an underwater cleanup was held by Ahmed Gabr, a former Egyptian Army scuba diver, with a team of 614 divers in the Red Sea in Egypt in 2015.
Guinness adjudicator Michael Empric was there in person to tally the participation having made a rare trip from New York City to do the official headcount between 9 a.m and 11 a.m. “I actually stood there and clicked off everyone as they got in the water,” he said sporting the dark blue Guinness blazer and teal tie. Divers entered the ocean and had to stay in the water at least 15 minutes to be counted.
Some people even came from other states to partake in this mission to help set the record, and pick up debris. A young girl named Dahlia Bolin, 13, was among them. She and her mother Rebecca came all the way from Mackinaw, Illinois. “There’s a lot of heavy weights for fishing line down there, but there’s some really beautiful fish, mostly,” Dahlia said.
Diver and environmentalist RJ Harper, who helped recruit divers for the event, reported that the divers recovered 1,600 pounds of lead fishing weights alone, the result of years of anglers cutting bait. “All those times the line gets caught, you just never really think about it,” Harper said. “Obviously, trash was collected, but the beauty of it is with 633 divers, we were able to do a very thorough cleaning.” Harper hopes the cleanup will inspire participants to hold cleanup events in the waters near their homes.
According to CNN, ocean protection group Project AWARE estimates that the divers collected up to 3,200 pounds of trash. And according to a video chronicling the cleanup made by the organization Be the Sealution, most of the trash collected was abandoned fishing gear, like nets, lines, and hooks; which makes sense considering the fact that fishing nets makes up 46% of plastic in the Great Pacific garbage patch, with other fishing gear making up the majority of the rest of the ocean’s plastic, according to a study published in the journal Nature.
“What I love about this record is that even if they don’t break the Guinness World Records title, they’re gonna make a huge difference in the community by cleaning up the pier, cleaning up the underwater world, which is what all these divers really are here for,” Empric told The South Florida Sun Sentinel in a video interview on the beach, while the divers were still hard at work underwater. “It doesn’t matter what happens today with the Guinness World Records,” he added. “What really matters is that everyone is out there cleaning up around the pier and trying to improve the community.”
Empric made an important point — there’s no way to lose at a trash cleanup because good is still being done for the ocean, sea creatures, and the planet. However, luckily for the Deerfield Beach divers, they trumped the previous record due to having 19 more participants, earning themselves the Guinness World Record for the world’s Largest Underwater Cleanup!
