Love Your Ocean Dive Cleanup with Sea Experience

Overview

On Sunday, February 25th, The International SeaKeepers Society partnered with Sea Experience for our first dive cleanup of the 2024 season. Sea Experience is a dive shop located in Ft. Lauderdale that is awarded the PADI Green Star to commemorate their efforts and dedication to conservation and identify them as a dive shop that cares about our coastal environment and actively takes steps to protect it. We were joined by 4 divers onboard their vessel and we set out in hopes of collecting some trash while appreciating our local marine wildlife. Our first site was Hog Heaven, the wreck of a 180-foot barge about 60-70 feet deep, intentionally sunk in 1986 as part of the Florida Artificial Reef Program. At this site, we are typically able to collect a lot of cargo shipping straps, and today was no exception. Our second tank was a drift dive at The Caves, a shallower reef site ranging in depth from 20-30 feet, named for its small caves. Across these two dives, we collected 9.6 pounds of trash, mostly consisting of lightweight cargo straps as well as some glass bottles and aluminum cans. While we were keeping an eye out for debris, we were lucky enough to see a Goliath Grouper, a large Southern Ray, and tons of fish like Hogfish, Angelfish, and Pufferfish. We are grateful to the volunteers who helped us to kick off our series of dive cleanups for this year and to Captain Brito and the whole team at Sea Experience for hosting us!