STORY: These divers have cleared more than

a ton of garbage from Croatia's Mljet Island

Date: April 29, 2023

(Matko Pojatina, Diver)

"All this waste comes from south to north and Mljet has the misfortune of being a natural dam for this waste for the rest of the Adriatic."

They've sorted the garbage into

different categories underwater

in hopes of collecting data for

researchers to address the problem properly

(Pero Tutman, Scientist, Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries)

"The assumption is that 70% of the waste sinks to the seabed either in the deep sea or in shallow coastal areas. By organizing these dives on the coast we are doing something significant, firstly, that the amount of waste is reduced and the negative pressure of plastic and marine waste is reduced, and secondly, that the level of environmental awareness is raised about the fact that there is something called marine waste and that it is necessary to act.”