Car tires, broken bottles, rusty cans, machine parts, dirty diapers, old clothes, shoes and even a few drivers licenses. These were only a few of the things brought out of the sea at Mulinu’u by triathletes on Saturday morning as they carried out an ocean cleanathon.
“We care about our ocean, especially because we swim in it regularly and can see what’s in there,” explained Team Manager Lani Young. “This is where we have our community races and while we are thankful to be able to swim bike and run in our beautiful Samoa, it’s sad how much rubbish is being dumped here.”
A group of twenty triathletes and parents braved the morning rain, with goggles and gloves, forming a line that walked and swam along a 1km distance following the shore. The line was slow moving as the triathletes worked together to lug heavier rubbish items to shore, and then return to deeper water to search for more.
The work took two hours and resulted in many bags of accumulated trash piled up for loading on the dump truck supplied by donor company Young Steel.
At the conclusion of the cleanathon, Falea’ana Wolly Collins, the Vice President of Samoa Triathlon, had an appeal for the public, to work together to keep our ocean clean. “We picked up so much rubbish out there, in the sea and on the rocks. Usually when people do a cleanup, they only get the rubbish here on the land. But when we go out into the water, it’s very bad, how much rubbish is there. We all need a beautiful clean environment. Our ocean is life. For fishing and swimming and for all of us. We ask please for everyone to take better care of our ocean.”
Mr Collins said this was only the first of many ocean cleanups and their triathletes would be doing it regularly. “Everyone is welcome to come help next time.”
