More than 600 divers set world record cleaning up debris from the ocean floor

A team of 633 divers in Florida broke the world record for largest underwater cleanup on Saturday, the Sun Sentinel reported.

According to the local newspaper, the set a mark recognized by the Guinness World Records in two hours as part of an event hosted by Dixie Divers just off the Deerfield Beach International Fishing Pier.

{mosads}The previous record was reportedly set in 2015 by a group of 614 divers in the Red Sea.

Michael Empric, an adjudicator for Guinness who called himself the “official eyes and ears of Guinness World Records on the ground” in an interview with the paper, said he counted off every diver who entered the water for more than 15 minutes.

“I actually stood there and clicked off everyone as they got in the water,” he said. “So we know immediately whether or not the record’s been broken.”

Arlington Pavan, the owner of the Dixie Divers facility in Deerfield Beach, was excited by the turnout for the cleanup event.

“Oh, it’s amazing to see everybody here, happy, just amazing,” Pavan told the newspaper. “The last record took 24 hours and we did it in two hours, so it’s amazing.”

Dahlia Bolin, a 13-year-old from Illinois, talked about her experience participating in the cleanup with her mother on Saturday.

“It was at the end of the pier about 20 feet down, just kind of buried in the sand,” she told the paper. “There’s a lot of heavy weights for fishing line down there, but there’s some really beautiful fish, mostly.”