Six-hundred and thirty-three divers gather at the Deerfield Beach International Fishing Pier for the world’s largest underwater cleanup. Photo: Dixie Divers
Beach cleanups are a pretty common and straightforward affair. Just organize and gather as many people as possible at a local beach and encourage them all to pitch in by picking up trash. It’s typically a collection of local members of the community, and it creates a little bit of accountability and leaves the beach a tad cleaner when they’re all done. Simple.
Underwater cleanups, however, you probably don’t hear of as often. On International Surfing Day, a little over 630 divers got together next to Florida’s Deerfield Beach International Fishing Pier and jumped into the water to set a Guinness World Record for the largest ever underwater cleanup. The initial tally reported they’d picked up at least 1,626 pounds of trash and 60 pounds of fishing line just in the area directly near the pier, with people coming from as far away as Europe and South America to be a part of the event. City officials say that they will now recycle and dispose of all of the collected ocean waste, which they estimate could come out to more than 3,200 pounds of marine debris.
It turns out this is actually an annual event organized by the Dixie Divers and Deerfield Beach Women’s Club. Their ocean cleanup has been running for several years now and this year’s event topped a previous record that was set in 2015 with 614 divers in Egypt. A Guinness adjudicator was sent from New York City to make the official headcount in Florida, and divers were required to stay in the water for at least 15 minutes to be included in the final count.
If that sounds simple, it probably wasn’t. “I actually stood there and clicked off everyone as they got in the water,” the adjudicator told the Sun Sentinel. All the divers actually had to get into the water one-by-one while he counted them off rather than a mad rush of divers entering the ocean. You can imagine counting off 633 people one-by-one would take some time, so there were definitely plenty of divers swimming around while picking up trash for more than 15 minutes. Plus everyone was into it anyway.
“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.”
