Bags of litter collected in first underwater clean of Brighton Palace Pier
A team of divers found various objects including plastic vapes, sunglasses and cable ties
Last updated 8th Jun 2023
The first ever underwater clean around Brighton Palace Pier has taken place to mark World Ocean Day.
A team of divers from SEA LIFE Brighton and the SEA LIFE Trust collected bags full of rubbish from the water underneath the structure, including vapes, sunglasses, old pier tokens and cable ties.
Joe Williams, curator for SEA LIFE Brighton, said: “The sea life has changed over many, many years and not for the better.
“One of the most shocking things that we found today in the underwater beach clean was animals living alongside and within rubbish.
“A colleague of mine found some rubbish with a little goby, which is a type of fish, living inside a shelter.
“I personally found a plastic hair clip that was covered in anemones, so we can see how the sea life is having to adapt to living alongside plastic.”
The Trust also organised hundreds of volunteers to help collect rubbish from the beach today, June 8, as the summer season gets underway.
During last year’s heatwave, Brighton and Hove City Council collected approximately 50 tones of waste over one weekend.
SEA LIFE Brighton’s general manager, Neil Harris, said: “There’s always more we can do and it’s events like today's that really strive to educate further, inspire people to take action and be responsible for their actions.”
He added: “Unfortunately we see littering get worse year on year and although we love the fact that people come down to Brighton to enjoy the beaches, we do see it as an ever-growing problem.
“We work with the council and have discussions with them about what we can do here at SEA LIFE Brighton in terms of getting out on the beach as much as we can with our teams to collect litter.
“We go out in the mornings before we open but we do still see quite a lot, despite the efforts of everyone in the city that lives and works here to campaign against pollution.”
Every year more than one million marine animals die from plastic debris in our oceans, with more than 80 per cent of all harmful pollutants tracing back to human activities on land, according to the SEA LIFE Trust.