Dive Against Debris - Sykes Lane, Rutland Water

Our first Dive Against Debris nicely timed with Project AWARE week 2019! held at Sykes Lane, Rutland Water.  Now we say first but every dive is a Dive Against Debris as in we always collect any rubbish we find.. this was just our first formal one.

Project AWARE is a not for profit organisation who are about taking action to create both local and global change for the ocean and the communities who depend on it.  

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But why Rutland Water its not an ocean?  
Well at some point all waterways connect and the water runs into the Ocean.  It is local and its great to do something for the community and when we are out and about collecting rubbish (yes Bridget rubbish not trash!) we always get asked what are we doing so, so its a chance to talk about rubbish, recycling and maybe using less of it... yesterday we reminisced about glass tomato ketchup bottles for those of us old enough to remember them...

Our area: Two 40m squares... one behind the beach area that is currently closed and the other to the right in what we know as our National Watersports Area
Question: What would we find?  We seriously hoped nothing but freshwater grasses and fish

We had a beach comb first whilst the first two sets of divers kitted up and in less than 10mins we had a little pile of plastic and our non divers 

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Then had a walk the length of our water front and wow some of the stuff found raised some questions as to why it was there in the first place.

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So whilst the divers were busy underwater Trevor setup a little kitchen and started to cook bacon butties... wow... thanks Trevor much appreciated.  At times he did look like the Swedish Chef of the muppets, don't you agree?. 

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What did we find?   Quite a bit of freshwater grass with at least one of our divers coming out looking like the Monster of the Deep

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​A set of keys, a Carbon fibre paddle and a metal pole / rod so all in all not bad... shame about the topside

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If we could remind everyone as the Anglian Water signs clearly say, please take your rubbish home with you or put in any of the bins provided.  

​Thanks to everyone who came along today to support our efforts, it was great fun and the weather was kind to us to.

Lets keep our tiny county tidy whilst taking that one small step to reduce our usage of single use plastics. So, what one small challenge are you going to set yourself.