It’s amazing what people will do to break a Guinness World Record. Just this past weekend, for example, hundreds of scuba divers entered the waters of Deerfield Beach in Florida for the largest underwater cleanup the world has ever seen.
The previous record was reportedly set in 2015 by a group of 614 divers in the Red Sea. This time around, a team of 633 divers took part in a two hour cleanup of the coast. To break the record, divers entered the ocean in groups and had to stay in the water for at least 15 minutes.
The amount of rubbish collected has not yet been measured officially, but apparently, divers retrieved 1,600 pounds of lead fishing weights alone, the result of years of anglers cutting their lines free. If one underwater cleanup can retrieve that much waste, hopefully, another cleanup will beat the record soon.