More than 1,600 pounds of trash was plucked from the ocean over the course of a month as part of the eighth annual Cash Trash Bash fundraiser.

Karen Plianthos, the founder of the event, said this year’s campaign raised more than $4,700 for charity while removing more than 100 bags worth of rubbish from the waters around the island.

“The impact may be minimal when you look at the global scheme of things, but that is 1,638lb of trash that is not in the ocean any more,” she said.

“I think it’s so important that you open up people’s eyes to what a single individual or family could do or the impact that they could have.

“I also believe in generational learning. If I don’t take the time to show my kids how important it is to save this resource, where are we going to be?”

Ms Plianthos said this year that she aimed to collect a smaller amount of trash than usual because she wanted to get her daughters, aged 5 and 7, more involved.

“Normally its me diving and my mother and daughters watching from the shore or cleaning the shoreline,” she said. “This year, for the first time, my daughters were diving, which was amazing to watch.

“In the past we would try to get one metric tonne of trash out of the ocean, and I said to my mother on Day 1 once they started to show initiative that we have got to lower the goal to 1,000lb because it is more important to me to be on the surface encouraging them to want to dive down and do this and be part of the ocean clean-up.

“I would much rather see us collect less trash but with everyone involved wholeheartedly, but we still blew our target out of the water — pardon the pun — and got 1,638lb and raised slightly more than $4,700.”

Mrs Plianthos said the funds would be divided between the Sargasso Sea Commission, which is working towards protecting the Sargasso Sea off the coast of the island, and Outer Banks Forever, a North Carolina non-profit that supports the Outer Banks National Parks.

“That includes Cape Hatteras, which is the closest point to Bermuda,” she said. “I thought that was pretty cool because there is a Bermuda connection.”

Ms Plainthos said that the absence of hurricanes meant that they were able to go out on the water for 30 days straight this summer, amassing 54 hours in dive time pulling out garbage.

“Every single day we were out on the boat or finding a beach, going somewhere to clear trash out of the ocean,” she said. “A total of 39 people donated funds while 28 folks came out with us on the boat.

“The age range went all the way from a little boy who was three years old to my mom, who is 74.”

Ms Plainthos said that rather than visit a variety of sites as she had done in past years, this year she wanted to try to focus her attention on a fewer number of specific areas and really get them clean.

She said they spent 15 days working on the northeastern side of Long Island, which she said was a natural catchment area for marine waste.

“The wind will just blow anything plastic-wise there, and the bottles are just naturally going to gather there,” she said. “Half of the 30 days was spent there and, in total, we gathered about 770lb of trash from that one location.

“One dive day we actually focused on a lot of the flotsam and jetsam in a bay there — you can’t really see it from a distance but once you get up on the rocks and look over, you see it there — and we pulled out 155lb of trash.

“I felt much better on the final day, to know that I am struggling to find trash there, which is what you want.”

Among the debris, she said she and her daughters found a number of historical bottles, including one intact Codd-neck bottle, and were able to see a range of marine life.

“You do find cool, smaller fish,” she said. “We went to Devonshire Bay twice, and the nursery in there of juvenile fish just blows your mind.

“There’s a lot of junk, almost construction-style of trash there, so when you find a piece of pipe when you bring it up, I guarantee there is going to be an eel inside of it.”

David Freestone, of the Sargasso Sea Commission, said the organisation was thrilled to have the community support — and for the funds to be raised through a marine clean-up.

“Community support is welcome, especially from someone who has raised the money in such an innovative way, doing good work and raising money with it,” he said.

“It is very generous and we are delighted to be a recipient in this.”