It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.
It's easy to forget about something you dropped in the water while you were floating on the river or wading at the beach. Maybe it was out of your control. Maybe your canoe tipped over. Perhaps a wave crashed into you and knocked you down.
Nonetheless, that litter didn't just disappear. Water can break some things down, but chances are whatever you dropped is still down there somewhere.
People spend a lot of time in the water, though, so there's unquestionably a buildup of litter all over our planet's waters.
YouTubers like Jake Koehler (DALLMYD) and Brandon M. Jordan (Jiggin' With Jordan) have made online careers out of diving in their local rivers in search of lost items.
Even in those more remote areas, you'll see a shocking amount of human-introduced debris resting at the bottom, clearly untouched for years.
While it provides some entertainment from a treasure hunting perspective, it's also pretty alarming to know that much is lying in our natural waters.
The most important thing we can do going forward is avoiding bringing non-buoyant items out on the water. The second is what you're about to see, although it's a long, gradual process that requires a ton of work.
In Deerfield Beach, Florida, a jaw-dropping 633 people dove into the water for the world's largest underwater cleanup, which picked up more than 9,000 pieces of underwater debris.
Watch the clip below:
"What an amazing day for conservation and an amazing day for the drive community," Jack Fishman, who attended the event, wrote in a Facebook post.
According to the Sun Sentinel, the previous record sat at 615 divers, which was when former Egyptian Army scuba diver Ahmed Gabr led an underwater cleanup in the Red Sea of Egypt in 2015.
Of course we'll never clean up all the trash, but the more we all pitch in together to clean up our waters, the healthier our wildlife and our ecosystem will remain in the long run.
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