Later this month, Taipei-based scuba divers Lin You-ping (林祐平), Tsai Chih-tung (蔡志童) and Luo Wen-yang (羅汶揚) will drive down to Kenting to do what they would normally do in Keelung — untangle fishing nets from corals and collecting bottles and other bits of trash from the seabed.
The trio met learning to scuba dive in Keelung more than three years ago. Not long after, Lin founded the organization, Diving TW (揪潛水同學會). Though its initial purpose was simply to get divers together and organize dives, the group soon took on an environmental and educational focus when Lin and the other divers started noticing trash in the ocean during their dives, and felt compelled to do something about it.
AWASH WITH GARBAGE
Photo courtesy of Lin You-ping
A typical day begins at 6:30am. The men drive to Keelung with their dive gear, put on their wetsuits, go on one or two dives and haul piles of garbage — fishing nets, rope, bottles, cigarette lighters, pieces of dead coral — back to their boat, before driving back to Taipei to clock in at their office jobs.
Tsai didn’t think too much of it the first time he saw nets and bottles during a dive.
“It was just there and I didn’t really pay any attention to the larger significance,” Tsai tells the Taipei Times.
Photo courtesy of Lin You-ping
However, the more trash he saw on subsequent dives, the more this started to bother him.
“I didn’t sign up to go scuba diving to see trash,” Tsai says. “I did it because I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the ocean and see the different types of marine life.”
Lin was also indifferent at first, though like Tsai, with each dive it began to upset him more, especially when he realized that ocean trash was a huge problem that plagued not just Keelung, but most of Taiwan’s east coast, which faces the Pacific Ocean.
Photo courtesy of Lin You-ping
“I had the opportunity to see how beautiful and amazing it is underwater and I felt sad that we were ruining it,” Lin says.
FISH FOR THOUGHT
Lin discovered a lot of the nets were discarded by fishermen who would leave it in the ocean if it got tangled in a reef, which traps the fish. Another issue has been fishermen throwing their nets into the ocean to catch fish, shrimp and crabs, but pulling out parts of coral reefs instead.
Photo courtesy of Lin You-ping
“They think, ‘after this area has no more fish left, I’ll just move onto another area,’ all the while not realizing that they’re ruining the habitat of aquatic animals,” Lin says.
Lin says attitudes toward food consumption is also fueling the problem.
“They don’t see fish in the ocean and think, ‘how pretty.’ They see it and think, ‘can this be eaten?’” Lin says.
Photo courtesy of Lin You-ping
Lin says he’s seen improvement in Keelung, where local fisheries have banned the use of gill nets, and where after being driven away from their habitat in the sea surrounding Chaojing Park (潮境公園), sea urchins have started to return.
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
The divers attribute the problem of ocean waste to a deep-rooted disconnect with nature — fostered from a young age when parents would tell their children that it is dangerous and haunted.
Photo courtesy of Lin You-ping
Knowing how to swim, Luo says, makes you appreciate your natural surroundings more because “you’ll swim out and feel struck by how big and gorgeous the ocean is and how blue the water is.”
Lin believes it’s more than just throwing trash in the ocean because it’s out of sight, out of mind. The problem, he insists, starts with how people in the city go about their daily lives.
“Just because we don’t live near the ocean, doesn’t mean that we’re not part of the problem,” Lin says.
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