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Team of divers clean sea floor at Palm Beach Jetty

Gabrielle JefferyWeekend Kwinana Courier

With help from Keep Australia Beautiful and supported by the City of Rockingham, eight amateur divers and support personnel did the difficult task of cleaning the sea floor under the Rockingham/Palm Beach Pier.

Organised by Mr Dignam, he chose early Saturday morning to beat the rush of walkers and fishers in the area.

“After assembling and kitting up, the plan of attack was to conduct a line abreast sweep in a clockwise motion around the pier, as this would cover the entire area underneath the pier along with about 16m either side,” Mr Dignam said.

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Participating alongside Mr Dignam were Mark Beenham, Wade Jansen-Moran, Stuart Mason, Willy Nelson, John Bywater, Paul Allen and Rodney Vagg.

“As usual with this type of job, you can’t plan for the unseen and it didn’t take long for the movement of divers and rubbish on the silty bottom for visibility to be reduced to almost zero,” Mr Mason said.

“It resulted in a wider sweep area and things becoming a little disorganised.”

After several surface trips to regain location, the team recovered a modest amount of debris.

Among the spoils were large items including chairs, a mountain bike and traffic cones.

Other items included general rubbish such as plastics, bottles, cans, fishing equipment and slightly stranger: clothing.

A barnacle encrusted shopping trolley had become the latest place for fish to lay their tails and an executive decision was made by the team to leave the underwater castle as it was.

LitterBusters collected the trash piled at the end of the pier by the divers.

“Several people thanked us for our efforts so all in all it was worth it,” he said.

“Based on the success of the operation, it will be a regular event.

“Big thank you to the patient and helpful local fishermen, the two gentlemen from LitterBusters who promptly removed the debris off the jetty, Kelly Levisohn from the City, Keep Australia Beautiful for supplying all required items for the clean-up and last but not least, all the volunteers that made the day successful.

“Thank you.”

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