JEDDAH: When divers descended to the Jeddah Marina seabed, they expected to find years of accumulated waste.
What surprised them was what they found beneath the debris.
In patches where the seabed was free of waste, marine life was already reclaiming its place among the marina’s waters.
“We found soft and hard corals growing and fish living there. We even came across the largest boxfish any of us have ever seen as divers, living in the marina as its natural home,” said Abdurrahman Al-Haddad, regional manager of SSI Arabia and general manager of Al-Haddad Scuba.
“It is the debris, not the location, that has been holding marine life back.”
The discovery came during the Al-Bahr Bahrek (The Sea Is Yours) initiative, a large-scale cleanup effort that removed tonnes of waste from the marina seabed.
Organized by Jeddah Transport Company under the patronage of Jeddah Gov. Prince Saud bin Abdullah bin Jalawi, the operation brought together hundreds of volunteers, including 165 divers from 11 diving centers.
Over 64 hours of fieldwork and more than 300 dives, teams recovered plastic, tires, metal, concrete, ropes and abandoned fishing nets from the seafloor.
Among the more unusual finds were shopping trolleys, household toilet seats, steel chains, boat furniture and fragments of old piers.
