How irritating and life-threatening would it be if you had to swim through plastic rubbish all the time?

Beach Buddies and the Southern Swimming Pool in Castletown teamed up to help people visualise and experience what marine life constantly faces - a continuous plague of plastic waste.

The pool was free for swimmers to dip into with 287 pieces of decontaminated single-use plastic bottles, drink stirrers and other plastic objects bobbing alongside them at the weekend.

Alice Hartley, assistant manager and swimming lesson co-ordinator at the pool, and Beach Buddies founder Bill Dale came up with the distinctive idea which raised £113 to aid of Beach Buddies in its mission to rid the unsustainable material from shores.

Alice said: ’Plastic is the most common ocean pollutant and is very harmful for marine life which often mistakes it for food.’

She said she wanted to make people ’think more about what they throw away and how they throw it away’, as well as encourage people to check out the pool.

’We spent hours last week washing everything up, making sure nothing was on it We have our own chemicals we use for the pool so had to make sure it wouldn’t interfere with those,’ Alice said.

’People were swimming through it and getting tangled in plastic.

’Those who normally come down to do lengths were finding it hard to swim, saying it was difficult to see.

’They were bumping into things or people. It was the closest thing we could get to show people what it’s like for marine life.

’We’ve got turtles in the ocean that get stuck in those plastic six-pack beer rings and some are dying because of it.’

She added: ’For education, rather than just talking about it, children have really got to experience what it’s like.’

Swimmers got to guess how many pieces of plastic were in the pool with Easter eggs being given away as prizes.

’Some were guessing around 500 pieces,’ Alice said.

As part of the initiative, the pool used displays to encourage people to ’reduce, reuse, and recycle’ their plastic waste.

Alice said the plastic issue was ’something I didn’t pay much attention to’ until looking at the facts.

She said: ’People tend to be naive to the problem, including myself.’

Bill said: ’Hopefully, the children who took part will all now better understand how plastic gets into the ocean and onto beaches, and they will re-think their attitudes.

’We always stress it’s the community who is causing the problem and it’s the community who must change to make things better in the future.’

The pool continues to fundraise for Beach Buddies through its ’Swim the South of the Island’ challenge which began in January and will end on April 5. Swimmers are sponsored while they tick off milestones done in the pool.