the great underwater cleaning of the Arcachon basin

Arcachon (Gironde), its towns and prestigious residences on the front line. Underwater, there is a variety of marine fauna, such as seahorses, octopuses or spider crabs. On the other hand, divers sometimes make strange discoveries there. “In terms of waste, we will say that we recover 80% of plastic, we will find a lot of waste from the sea trades, (…) beer cans, wallets. (…) We find everything”explains Olivier Linardon, president of the Nettoyeurs SubAquatiques (NSA) association.

A new large-scale cleaning planned for October

The mission of the basin’s NSA is to make divers aware of environmental protection. “We are constantly trying to do what we can at our level to be able to improve the quality of the water a little.“, confides Olivier, a diver at the NSA. That day, the fishing was good. Pieces of scrap metal, plastic, but also much larger pieces that the divers had to leave at the bottom of the water, because more difficult to extricate in the cold water of winter.Next October, the association is organizing a major cleaning of the basin which will bring together 250 divers from all over France.