It was a successful day of un-trashing the beaches and reefs near the Downbelow dive station and we’re happy to report that Gaya island is cleaner.

A big ‘well done’ to Downbelow for organising this event, mentioned a few days ago, to Sabah Parks for assisting in transport, jetty fees and park fees, and to Project AWARE for the sponsorship to make it happen.

But the heroes of the day were the people, divers and non-divers alike, who gave their time and put in so much effort.  Thanks to them a part of one of Kota Kinabalu’s biggest islands, Pulau Gaya, is now much cleaner and the reefs the better.

The day started not too early as we departed the Sabah Parks jetty from near the Hyatt in KK city.  It took 3 boat-trips to ferry all the volunteers to the Downbelow dive station, which is located on the grounds of Sabah Park’s Headquarters on Gaya Island.

Following a briefing and a few short speeches by Ev from Downbelow and the Director of Sabah Parks, the 40 odd participants were separated into divers and non-divers, and further broken up into clean-up crews.

Armed with our tools, consisting of hard-knit gloves and plastic bags, for the beach dwellers and net-bags for the divers, we set out for some serious cleaning.  The divers got kitted up for diving on some of Kota Kinabalu’s most colourful reefs, whilst the beach squad dispersed along the beach and into the forest.

I was part of the beach clean-up crew and we quickly discovered where the tide and current preferred to dump the glass bottles, plastic bags, pieces of building wood, and all sorts of other colourful trash, which will be around long after the rest of us are on this planet no longer.  We spent the next couple of hours removing the said items from under rocks, wedged in sand, off the branches of low hanging trees and from under shrubs.

Soon a big and heavy pile of rubbish was collected. Heavy, because there were so many glass bottles, and partly because most of the plastic bag trash were filled with sand before we emptied them.  Before long we had filled all the big trash bags we had, and headed back to the meeting point for a well earned break.

Slowly the other clean-up crews joined us with their contributions of trash.  The divers came back with a lot less trash than what we expected, but instead of being disappointed, we took it as a good sign.  Clean reefs, are good reefs.

We had some well received lunch and polished off litres of orange juice and water.  We even had time for a little bit of frisbee throwing (there’s always time for frisbee – and two people brought frisbees along).

Taking pictures of our trophy trash, a brief mangrove tree planting ceremony and Downbelow cap souvenirs closed off the trash collecting proceedings for the day, before we headed back to the mainland again.

The response for the event was overwhelming and I think Ev had to arrange additional transport for all the volunteers that put up their hands to help us clean up.  Thank you very much to everyone who helped – it’s a small squad against the legions of trash out there, but one by one we can make a difference.

If you’re keen to join similar projects in future, keep your eyes on this blog or surf on over to kkdiveclub.com.  If you live in Kota Kinabalu and love diving, join the club for really affordable dive days.

Or if you just visit KK every now and again for a bit of a diving holiday, you can still keep in touch and we’ll invite you along.