SpazzApnea - Clean Seabed Operation (Rome leg)

A dive for the sea on the coast of Rome

SpazzApnea - Clean Seabed Operation is the major national day dedicated to cleaning beaches and seabeds, mobilizing hundreds of volunteers along the Italian coasts every year. In the Municipality of Rome, in the Lazio region, the event takes place on the coast of Ostia, where freedivers, scuba divers, and ordinary citizens gather to restore the sea's beauty, freeing it from the waste that accumulates in the sand and underwater.

How the competition works

SpazzApnea is not just a simple cleanup: it is a true eco-friendly team competition. Participants become "sea scavengers" and, divided into teams, have about three hours in the morning to recover as much waste as possible, either by freediving on the seabed or walking along the shoreline and beach.

At the end of the collection, the material is weighed and cataloged: each type of waste is assigned a score based on its danger to the marine environment and decomposition time. The teams with the highest scores are awarded prizes by the event's partners. It is a formula that combines sportsmanship, fun, and a concrete environmental message.

Environment and citizen science

In addition to the cleanup action, SpazzApnea collaborates with the SeaCleaner citizen science project: data on the collected waste is cataloged and shared in a database, providing a valuable scientific contribution to mapping marine pollution at a national level. Each volunteer thus becomes part of a data collection effort useful for research.

A national network

Born in Genoa in 2018 and now a fixed early-summer appointment, the initiative takes place simultaneously in numerous coastal and lakeside locations across the peninsula. Rome is one of the stops on the Tyrrhenian coast, alongside cities such as Ancona, Bari, Camogli, Lerici, Marina di Pisa, Naples, Messina, Taranto, and Trapani. The event is promoted by SpazzApnea ODV with the support of Apnea Academy and the patronage of WWF SUB, and features multi-time freediving champion Umberto Pelizzari as its testimonial.

Why participate

• An active and free way to take care of your city's sea
• An experience open to freedivers, certified scuba divers, and land-based volunteers
• An event that combines sport, social interaction, and environmental education
• The opportunity to contribute to a scientific project monitoring marine waste

In Ostia, on the coast of Rome, SpazzApnea has become a small festival for the environment: an appointment that reminds us every year how much the Mediterranean needs concrete actions and communities that take care of it.