Golf: Marine disaster uncovered off Pebble Beach

Something ugly lies in the belly of the picturesque waters hugging the iconic cliffs of the Pebble Beach Golf Links – a seabed covered in golf balls.

A pair of high school students have an uncovered a potential environmental disaster after discovering thousands of balls blanketing the ocean floor of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Alex Webber and Jack Johnston made the confronting find while free-diving in the waters that straddle the famous course in the summer holidays.

“Last May Jack and I got together and decided this was a huge environmental problem and we needed to change it,” Webber told CBS.

The golf balls pose a significant threat to the biodiversity of the bay because at their core, golf balls contain zinc acrylate, a substance which the UN has classified as "very toxic to aquatic organisms and may cause adverse long-term effects in the aquatic environment."

Simultaneously, as the sea water corrodes the balls, layers of elastic bands used to make up the outer shell unravel and sit on the sea floor.

These tangles look uncannily similar to seaweed which the animals of Monterey Bay, including fish and turtles, may mistakenly feed upon.

The pair have reached out to the wider community for their support, launching a crowd-funding campaign for their plight.

The plight off the coast of Pebble Beach, which has hosted six majors and will again hold the US Open in 2019, could become a country—wide, if not global problem with it estimated that over 300 million golf balls are lost every year in the United States.