A content creator known as @charquitocanario has taken to social media to report that he has collected more than 50 golf balls from the seabed off the south coast of Tenerife. The young influencer, David Segura, who boasts over a million followers on Instagram and nearly 845,000 on TikTok, posted a video criticising what he describes as the folly of building a golf course right next to the sea, which leads to negative impacts such as this. The video shows the large number of balls he retrieved from beneath the water, just metres from the Tenerife shoreline.
Environmental impact of coastal golf courses
Segura warns that one of the environmental impacts of golf courses is that many balls end up scattered around the area; in this case, on the seabed, due to the proximity of the course to the coast. He adds that those truly responsible “couldn’t give a damn”. According to the influencer, just a few metres from the water there is a hole from which dozens of balls end up in the sea every day.
Initially, the content creator stated that the balls belonged to a nearby golf course, which opened in 1987 with a professional tournament. However, just 24 hours later, Segura posted a follow-up video clarifying that the golf balls do not belong to the club located at the exact coordinates he indicated in the description of his first video. He encouraged the public to come and help collect the balls lost on the seabed in order to minimise this impact. Nevertheless, David Segura chose not to name the responsible club to avoid stirring up controversy.
Microplastic risk from degrading balls
In any case, the young man warns that the real danger comes when the balls begin to disintegrate. To back up his point, he references a scientific paper titled “Quantification of marine debris associated with coastal golf courses”, which examined decomposition patterns in collected golf balls. The study shows that the degradation and loss of microplastics from golf balls in the marine environment may be a cause for concern.
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