The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, a World Heritage Site and one of the largest marine conservation areas in the world, is an isolated assortment of tiny uninhabited islands and coral reefs that are home to an amazing array of marine animals and plants, including 14 million seabirds and endangered green sea turtles.
But unfortunately, the once-pristine area also has become a catch-all for the massive amount of garbage that humans dump into the oceans. In October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to send a ship and a team of 17 divers to Papahānaumokuākea in an effort to clean up the trash, which is endangering animals there.
The divers removed 57 tons of garbage, ranging from bottle caps and cigarette lighters to giant nets lost by factory fishing trawlers — one of which was 28 feet by 7 feet and weighed 11.5 tons. They counted thousands of pieces of plastic, including 7,436 hard plastic fragments, 3,758 bottle caps, 1,469 plastic beverage bottles and nearly 500 lighters.
The divers also rescued turtles and other creatures trapped in the derelict nets.
"The amount of marine debris we find in this remote, untouched place is shocking," Mark Manuel, operations manager for NOAA Fisheries Coral Reef Ecosystem Division and chief scientist for the mission, said in a press release. "Every day, we pulled up nets weighing hundreds of pounds from the corals. We filled the dumpster on the Sette to the top with nets, and then we filled the decks. There's a point when you can handle no more, but there's still a lot out there."