On Saturday, 19th of October 2019 the Blue World Institute and our partners from Diving Center SUB SEA SON have organized Dive clean up of the sea-floor at the island of Lošinj – at the Veli Lošinj Port and Valdarke Bay. This local event was organized as a part of the activities of the „marGnet“ project co-financed by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, Office for Cooperation with NGOs of the Government of the Republic Croatia and Croatian Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund. This clean up action was the extend of the previous activities held in May 2019 when we had to stop the action because of the rain and the Veli Lošinj port remained uncleaned. Also, this time we wanted to finish job started in the bay of Valdarke and remove the large sunken pieces of the broken pontoon construction. Using the balloons we managed to lift the 5 m long metal rail on the surface and tow it with the help of Eco Boat own by local waste management company KUCL.

The weather was very good this time and our 12 divers with the help of the 30 volunteers on the shore successfully removed 5 m3 of the litter from the sea-floor. Among the garbage collected, highest number of items were 126 glass bottles with additional 78 glass fragments, 10 car tires, pieces of chains and ropes, 2 car batteries and variety of other objects that definitely don’t belong to the sea. For all the participants Mali Lošinj Tourist Office organized lunch.

The aim of this action was to increase public awareness on the problem of marine litter on the sea-floor and to promote healthy and sustainable living practices for protection of  the marine environment by promoting the „marGnet“ initiatives.