With more than 15 years of experience and a mantra to clean the ocean and fight marine debris all year round, The Blue Ocean Club, can celebrate another successful year of taking action for the ocean.

Based in Hong Kong, Blue Ocean Club carries out Dive Against Debris® Surveys throughout the year. Project AWARE’s flagship citizen science program, Dive Against Debris empowers scuba divers to remove marine debris from the ocean and report data on the types, quantities and locations of materials collected. The data collected provides valuable information about underwater debris to help inform policy change.

This year, Blue Ocean Club set themselves a challenge to organize six ‘hits’ - their name for Dive Against Debris Surveys at their local dive sites. As well as removing the rubbish and reporting the data, another key goal for the club was to raise awareness of the issues the ocean is facing and to encourage others to join the Project AWARE movement and take action for ocean protection.

Their first ‘hit’ took place in May at Bluff Island near Sai Kung, Hong Kong with 32 divers taking part, collecting 28kg of rubbish from the seabed. The most common item found being plastic. On their sixth ‘hit’ at Little Palm Beach, Sai Kung, Hong Kong, 52kg of rubbish was removed, mainly abandoned fishing tools (lures, rods/poles, nets) and aluminum/glass bottles. The data Blue Ocean Club have collected has been added to Project AWARE’s global database of over one million pieces of trash to help support the development and implementation of policies to improve solid waste management, locally and globally.

Blue Ocean Club can proudly reflect on their impact from their six Dive Against Debris Surveys this year: a total of 438.76kg, and 2,598 items removed from the ocean floor in 2018, alone! Collectively our actions add up to big results and takes us one step closer to reaching the next million by the end of 2020!

Project AWARE’s global database reports that the most common items found on the seafloor throughout Greater China are: beverage bottles, food wrappers and plastic fragments. You can help protect the ocean by refusing single-use plastic, reducing what you don’t need, reusing what you can and recycling the rest in your everyday lives. Join the movement for a clean ocean and take action to help us reach our #NextMillion2020 goal!