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Saturday, September 20th the setting was perfect for a beach clean-up dive. Beautiful weather and the calmest Lake Michigan I have ever seen.

A group of volunteers from Scuba Systems arrived at Greenwood Beach in Evanston to help clean-up the beach from underwater. Divers were armed with green mesh bags donated by PADI’s Project AWARE. Their stomachs were full thanks to an over abundance of donated Einstein’s Bagels and Jamba Juice. The divers were excited. After searching for over an hour along the bottom, the divers found much less trash than was expected.

While we still managed to clean-up over a hundred food wrappers and paper receipts that had made their way into the lake, we were hoping to save the lake from far more litter. Despite the lack of trash collected, everyone really enjoyed taking part in the dive and meeting new people. Of the group only two people had known each other prior to the dive, but afterwards everyone had found new dive buddies.

There was even talk of next years dive already! Simon Pata, one of the participants remarked that “it was a great occasion to dive in Lake Michigan and at the same time to help clean the water and beach. I will definitely see you next year!”

So remember, Saturday September 19th, 2009 we will once again be out hunting for any trash that could have made its way into our great Lake Michigan and we hope that you will be able to join us next time for International Beach Cleanup Day!


See some Images from the Cleanup Below.