BEIRUT: Divers took part in the International Underwater Cleanup day Sunday, gathering around 1 ton of rubbish from the waters around Beirut.

It was the ninth annual such event – sponsored in Lebanon by HSBC bank and organized globally by Project AWARE, an international oceans group – to be held by the National Institute for Scuba Diving in Lebanon, which offered participants free use of their equipment for the day.

The center carried out 15 dives throughout the day, with rotating teams of around 12-15 divers each. Three diving boats ferried divers from the center, at the marina in Downtown Beirut, to different areas off the coast, as far as Raouche where the shallow waters were explored for trash.

But while a dumpster awaited divers on their return, which was replaced every few hours by Sukleen, the event was not just about picking up rubbish, but also raising awareness in the wider community.

Ziad Samaha, an instructor at the center, said that, for him, one of the main issues was the bad reputation the capital has a diving destination, despite the wide variety of sites and wrecks.

“Whenever divers come to Lebanon they say, ‘Why would anyone want to come to dive in Beirut?’ As instructors it’s a really horrible thing to hear,” he said.

“The purpose of this event is to motivate people who are non-divers into not throwing rubbish into the sea,” he added.

In Lebanon, Samaha believes, many people do not have a respectful attitude to the environment around them.

“We have a schooled society in Lebanon but not an educated society. I just don’t understand it when I see a doctor, a lawyer or a journalist throwing rubbish into the sea.”

Suzanne Hakim, another instructor at the center, agreed.

“These people who throw coffee cups off the Corniche, they keep their homes clean but when they are outside they suddenly think it is okay to throw rubbish anywhere.”

“If you travel abroad to Europe or Canada people don’t throw litter like people do here,” she added.

Most of the rubbish collected Sunday was “direct littering” – coffee cups and soda cans thrown into the sea, and one LL1,000 note – and also trash from landfills in Sidon and Karantina, as storms and high winds often blow debris from the landfills into the Beirut area.

And while trash damages the water quality of the Mediterranean, which Samaha calls one of the oldest used and abused seas in the world, pollution also affects the flora and fauna of the ocean, Samaha said, harming fish populations and underwater plant life.

There is also a serious issue concerning medical waste management, Samaha added. The country’s hospitals produce 11 tons of medical waste every day, but the country lacks the suitable means to dispose of it correctly. Much is left in landfills, and then often finds its way into the sea.

At last year’s event, an intravenous drip bag, complete with needles, was discovered off Beirut’s coast.

But there is one pollutant which the diving team is unable to pick up invisible industrial, or chemical, pollution

Substances such as mercury, zinc and nitrate are common in the waters around Beirut, Samaha said, and are dangerous, not just to sea life but to people swimming in the sea.

And while Sunday’s event was mainly about raising the issue of sea pollution among non-divers, there is also an issue of responsible diving across Lebanon, Samaha said.

“There are lots of scuba centers in Lebanon which do spear fishing courses to attract customers and other things which are not respectful to the seas.”

Samaha himself eats seafood, but buys it from local fishermen, to support their industry, he added.

At the NISD, which was founded in 1980 and has around 2,000 members, he said, “We encourage people to take pictures and to shoot videos of the fish, not to shoot the fish themselves.”