iCare Trash Derby

Five Active Divers Remove Trash from Key Largo's Mangroves

The third annual I.CARE Trash Derby sponsored by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation was held over the weekend with the goal of clean seas. It included two days of debris collection sunrise to sunset from Key Largo to Key West. Five Active divers participated in the derby on a morning dive at Pirates Cove Watersports to help "Triumph Over Trash." Safety Officer Rachel Davis led the dive with the assistance of Safety Officer Candidate Aaron Brooks, his lovely wife Sarah, Leah Bamford and new member Danny Varela, making his first dive with the club. 

As the boat was pulling away from the dock both Leah and I suggested to the captain that we dive the mangroves vs. the reef, as we did that last year and recovered unbelievable amounts of trash. The mangroves act much like a sieve, capturing all kinds of trash and we thought that would be the best use of our time. Turns out there were 3-4 foot seas on the reef. Half the boat wanted the reef and the other half wanted mangroves. Because this was a trash cleanup dive, fortunately the mangroves won out. 

It was a short ride out to the mangroves, and our first stop was in about seven feet of water. Now that it's May the water has warmed up to a nice 80 degrees. It was a quick swim over to the mangroves, where we found a motherload of trash including numerous glass bottles, plastic bags wrapped around the mangrove roots, aluminum cans, plastic water bottles, scrap metal and much more. Great finds from other divers included a large window pane, wood siding and even a random airplane tire, leaving us to wonder what happened to the rest of the plane! 

The second dive site was even shallower and this is where I found my favorite item of the day - a five-gallon water cooler plastic jug along with many more glass bottles and numerous other items. 

One very interesting thing about diving the mangroves vs. the reef is the unusual marine life you see here. We saw a large blue crab, spaghetti worms, baby starfish, baby barracuda, large short nose puffer, upside down jellyfish. I saw something new and very unusual - the mangrove upside down jelly with hot pink tentacles sticking up out of its body. Amazing after nearly 1,400 dives I'm still seeing things I've never seen before, and this never gets old! 

All in all it was a wonderful day and we left with a great feeling that we were doing our part for clean seas. 

-- Active Divers President and Safety Officer Rachel Davis