Christmas Island Wet 'n' Dry Adventures

Every year on (or close to) World Environment Day our local environmental group, Island Care, organise an island –wide community clean up to raise awareness and generally tidy up our town.

For the last few years, this has included an underwater component, with local divers rallying to scour the bottom our house reef, Flying Fish Cove, for human debris. Tanks were provided, free of charge, courtesy of CI Wet’n’ Dry Adventures- thanks Lin and Hama!

Sunday 7^th June 2009, was our best turnout yet, with 16 local divers showing up to do their bit. There must be something about a free tank that inspires folk to pull themselves out of bed at 8am on a Sunday morning; or maybe it was the promise of a sausage sizzle that did it? Whatever the motivation, the underwater team did a fantastic job.

Some of the landlubbers complained that the divers were taking the soft option, but despite being surrounded by pristine corals and plenty of tropical fish, cleaning up underwater can be very tricky. Matt and Brad had to surface after 40mins, low on air, after hauling 2 huge metal pipes and a tyre back to shore. Others spent most of their dive trying to free coral of fishing line, a delicate operation.

The ubiquitous plastic bag was by far the most insidious type of litter in this year’s ‘catch’. Plastic bags represent a serious threat to the endangered hawksbill turtles, who regularly mistake the bags as squid. Filling their bellies with this indigestible flotsam causes them to die slowly of starvation. So while a small collection of bags doesn’t look very impressive volume –wise, it makes a huge difference to our turtle population. Well done guys!

Lynny and Linda even managed to save enough bar to check out the nudibranchs under the jetty and scored a rare sighting of the intricate ——-. So perhaps the land cleaners were right?

Overall, this year’s event was a huge success, with a superbly sunny day, plenty of keen workers, a fantastic sausage sizzle and lots of rubbish “off the streets”.

Article provided by Island Care.

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