Turkey celebrated the first week of June as Environment Week. The first edition of the event was an occasion for intense cleaning efforts on land and at sea. On Wednesday, objects removed from the bottom of the sea were put on display across the country to raise awareness about the issue.

Though industrial pollution is more alarming, individual contributions to the garbage piling up at the bottom of the seas are concerning for the country as it strives to preserve marine life and fight against climate change.

In Istanbul, objects removed from the Marmara Sea off the coast of Kadıköy and Eminönü, on the city’s Asian and European sides respectively, offered a strange mix that highlighted the breadth of the littering. Spread across the ports in Eminönü and Kadıköy, a prop Kalashnikov rifle, a motorcycle, a saz (a traditional string instrument) and handcuffs were found, among the many usual plastic bottles. In another corner of the "exhibition" was a display of laptops, cellphones, power drills and fire extinguishers.

"Everything you can imagine is removed from the sea," Ayşen Erdinçler, director of the Department of Environmental Protection and Control of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB), told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Wednesday. One of the interesting things that divers sweeping the bottom of the sea discovered were fish trapped in bottles. "Some were stranded there when they were still young and they apparently grew there and now cannot leave the bottle due to their size," she said.

Nurettin Ünal, head of an underwater unit of Istanbul’s fire department, who dove into the seas for the cleaning work, said some of the objects apparently fell in by accident but others were randomly dumped. "The things you see here are the only ones we could remove but there are more. Sheer manpower is not enough to completely clean the sea, so it is better to have people not throw the garbage away than expecting others to clean it for you," he said. "I thought this was a stall for secondhand products," saod Adem Bolat, a passerby who stopped to examine the garbage at Kadıköy port. "Finding bottles at sea is not unusual but I was amazed to see large chairs people dumped at sea," he said.

In Istanbul’s neighboring Kocaeli province, an eclectic mix of garbage was brought up from the depths of the sea, including a drone and huge tires, as divers carried transferred the junk to a port at the Gulf of Izmit. "We want to see the fish and other creatures when we dived but this is what we came across," said Özcan Karabulut, a diver who joined the cleaning work. Karabulut was among a group of divers cleaning the sea while young students cleaned up the coast in a campaign to raise awareness about protecting the environment.

"We clean one spot but it is not enough. We are talking about the larger Marmara Sea. Everybody should act responsibly to protect it," Kocaeli Mayor Tahir Büyükakın told reporters.

The Marmara is not the only sea under pollution threat. In Mersin on the Mediterranean coast, divers from the local firefighting department, coast guard and police discovered every kind of garbage imaginable at sea during their daylong sweep, from shopping carts to antennas. Dr. Bülent Halisdemir, head of the Environmental Protection and Control Department of Mersin municipality, said this was just a small fraction of the "thousands of cubic meters of garbage" removed from the sea every year. "I appeal to the citizens not to throw anything into the sea. They may think that the thing they dumped is small and will ‘disappear’ but this is not the case. Nothing truly disappears in nature. It evolves into a pollutant," he told reporters.

The municipality of Ayvalık, a popular vacation destination in the western province of Balıkesir, followed an alternative approach to raise awareness about marine pollution. Objects removed from the Aegean Sea, which the town is littoral to, were converted into a "Big Sea Garbage Monument" on a beach. In the shape of a nine-floor pyramid, the monument is the work of an environment nongovernmental organization (NGO) and students of a fine arts high school. A 10-meter (32-foot) high drawing about marine pollution accompanies the monument.

"We are happy to have two more blue flag beaches this year but we have to do more to sustain it," Ayvalık Mayor Mesut Ergin told reporters next to the monument. He was referring to an international recognition scheme for sustainable, environment-friendly beaches whose number in the town rose to 16. "The monument here shows some kind of evolution of pollution on each floor. We have to sustain our awareness to keep our seas clean and this is not solely the job of municipalities. Everyone living in Ayvalık has a task to keep the sea clean," he said.