{"id":280628,"date":"2026-01-12T09:26:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T09:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/280628\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T09:26:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T09:26:18","slug":"more-than-500-tyres-collected-from-plymouth-sound-seabed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/280628\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 500 tyres collected from Plymouth Sound seabed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765806968_986_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4a8589f0-dc2d-11f0-baba-317f14ba3c9d.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"The Ships Project Mallory Haas sitting on the edge of a boat holding a tyre which has been retrieved from the seabed in Plymouth Sound. She is wearing a black and red wetsuit and a black woolly hat with a white skull pattern. She is smiling widely. The sea and the sky are both quite grey.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>The Ships Project<\/p>\n<p>Director of the Ships Project Mallory Haas with the 500th tyre retrieved from the seabed in Plymouth Sound <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Volunteer divers who have been working in Plymouth Sound are celebrating collecting more than 500 tyres from the seabed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Ships Project, which is a not-for-profit organisation that researches and explores maritime historical sites, is halfway through its scheme to raise 1,000 tyres from the ocean floor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">However, the scale of the problem is much bigger than originally thought and it is feared the number of tyres in the water could run into thousands.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">After five years, The Ships Project has retrieved more than 23,000kg of rubbish from the water.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Lot of rubbish down there&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Tyres are often used as fenders on the side of boats.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">When they break loose, they are found on the foreshore as well as in deeper water, polluting it as they degrade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The project has even found a tractor tyre and a motorbike.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;It&#8217;s not really The 1,000 Tyres Project, it&#8217;s the 5,000 Tyres Project,&#8221;  said Mallory Haas, one of the directors of The Ships Project.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;There&#8217;s quite a lot of rubbish down there and we only have about 70% of the waters around Plymouth surveyed so there&#8217;s quite a lot more we just don&#8217;t know about yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765806968_986_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/de5a7fb0-dc2c-11f0-baba-317f14ba3c9d.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"The Ships Project A tyre being pulled up from the seabed in murky water in Plymouth Sound.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>The Ships Project<\/p>\n<p>The tyres that have been pulled up from the seabed at Plymouth Sound will be recycled<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Gerrard Spear, another director of the project, said: &#8220;A lot of the divers, a lot of the fishermen now realise the importance of keeping the Sound and the area clean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;We have volunteers that help us go out and collect these things.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;Fortunately we now have a route to get rid of them them which was always the stumbling block.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;You pull them out of the sea, chuck them in landfill, so what? They end up back in the sea again in a decade or two&#8217;s time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;This method of clearing them out and getting them recycled was key to the whole operation,&#8221; said Mr Spear.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765806968_986_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/b268ff70-dc2d-11f0-baba-317f14ba3c9d.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"The Ships Project A pile of tyres which have been retrieved from the seabed in Plymouth Sound. Some are stacked up on blue pallets.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>The Ships Project<\/p>\n<p>The tyres are set to be cleaned before they are recycled<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Ships Project is continuing to fundraise so it can complete more scans of the waters around Plymouth and keep its boats out collecting the marine rubbish its surveys uncover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ships Project Director of the Ships Project Mallory Haas with the 500th tyre retrieved from the seabed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[18,440,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-280628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115881416379526745","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}