Diving Duo Recovers 50,000 Golf Balls Off California Coast

Everyone has seen videos on the internet of people hitting golf balls out into the ocean. Well, that is apparently more common than you would ever think.

A few years ago, a 16-year-old diver was free diving off of the California coast near Pebble Beach when she noticed that there was an incredible amount of golf balls on the ocean’s bottom. There were so many that the teen and her father became alarmed with the sheer amount of balls that in just that one small area. So they decided to do something about it.

Together, the diving duo recovered hundreds of pounds of golf balls out of the ocean. And this recovery effort hasn’t just been around Pebble Beach. Their mission has moved to five separate golf courses, and they have collected a whopping 50,000 golf balls out of the ocean to date.

A haul of golf balls recovered by Ralf Oestermann from a lake at a…

A haul of golf balls recovered by Ralf Oestermann from a lake at a golf course on November 23, 2017 in Achim, Germany. Oestmann makes a living from recovering sunken golf balls at golf courses across… Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

The efforts are certainly admirable, especially since more just keep appearing. 

“When we were out there,” Stanford professor Matt Savoca, who helps with the efforts, says, “We’d hear, ‘plink, plink,’ and we’d look up on the hill and there’d be golf balls flying in off the course right into the ocean where we were doing collections.”

The estimate is that the group can pull out 500 to 5000 balls a day in perfect conditions.

This is an important task to undertake because of the environmental effects that submerged golf balls have on marine life. The team are now published in journals and concluded that golf balls have coated polyurethane shells that degrade over time as well as containing zinc, which is highly toxic.

The currents of the ocean also help speed up this decay as the balls grind against the ocean floor.

Aerial View of the 18th hole at the Pebble Beach Golf Links on May 9,…

Aerial View of the 18th hole at the Pebble Beach Golf Links on May 9, 2010 in Pebble Beach, California. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

Obviously, not all of these balls enter the water intentionally, since so many courses are on the coastline, but this is still a problem nonetheless. It’s awesome seeing people take initiative with this problem and maybe they’ll eventually find a way to limit how many balls enter the water as well as removing them.