In 2015, Dive Friends Bonaire hosted four Clean Up dives at various sites around the island. Thanks to our 442 volunteers, a whopping 5,782 piece of marine debris were removed from the marine environment of Bonaire. And we’d like to thank our volunteers for each and every piece!
Thanks for each and every piece. You had a major positive impact on our environment!
We just want to take the time to acknowledge the work that you’ve done. Plastic bags look a lot like jelly fish when floating around in the water and can be eaten by sea turtles. You, our volunteers, removed 23 of them. Fishing line is a major entanglement issue that can trap and drown marine life. Thanks to our volunteers there are 680 less pieces of dangerous fishing line around threatening the lives of sea turtles and other marine life. There are now 339 less plastic cups, 39 less pieces of rope, 626 less plastic fragments, 295 less cans and 1,169 less bottles in the ocean. Not to mention 9 less plastic straws…doesn’t really sound like a lot – but if you’ve seen this video of a sea turtle with a straw stuck up their nose….any little bit that we can do from stopping this from happening again is worth it! Yuck!
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150817-sea-turtles-olive-ridley-marine-debris-ocean-animals-science/
All of our collected debris has been entered into a global database with Project AWARE and this information is being used to drive policy change to ensure heathy, debris free oceans for generations to come.