A 7.30 a.m rise on a sunny Sunday morning and an expectation of something different in the annals of SCUBA diving. It was a "charity gig" for the local Scouts in the form of a Beer-Bottle Dive in the waters of one of our local lakes. Our club had done this before and it seemed like a good idea to do it again.

I did not forget the unpleasant experience of suiting -up in the full sun with the thought that this would not be the rich vista of our renowned west coast underwater marine environment. I had never expected it to be an outer reef in Berkeley Sound, or the Gulf Islands. My anticipation was merely for a salt-free splish splash to help out a worthy cause.

Fully ready and checked out , I descended into the murk past broken branches covered with algae and other greenish brown growths, reminding myself to avoid becoming entangled. It is important to move very slowly so as to avert the fate of becoming ensnared in fishing line; anyway I had already seemed to have lost sight of my buddy.

The bottom came up very fast and...... oh dear, how disgusting.... my face, arms and upper torso slid into what I might describe as a loose jelly. It became dark but I could still breath quite well and soon found my suit -inflator button. Pressing it easily, I was able to rise out of what I immediately knew to be the typical substrate of our local lakes. I was soon to see some new additions to the normal brown silty scenery.

Bottles yes, many of them and more than we could ever collect in a whole day. But the rest," ah there's the rub"; what I saw was truly disgusting and nauseating. All around me was a testimony of disregard for beauty, harmony and the general well-being of our environment. It was a reflection of a disturbing malaise in our society. At every turn I seemed to drift into all that any human beings have ever thought to discard. There were rusty lawn-chairs, socks, bras, panties, condoms, opened jagged sardine cans and countless slimy partially decayed objects that only my imagination could start to identify. None of this was pretty to say the least and I wondered for a moment whether my regulator, which was firmly sealed against my lips ,would protect me from some life-threatening infection. Whoever was responsible for the donation of the bottles was also responsible for much, much more.

Let's all clean up our acts!