A YouTube star has become an unlikely ocean saviour after raising millions to clean up plastic pollution.

YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, has raised more than US$30million to remove over 13 million kilograms of pollution from the ocean in just three months, thanks to the generosity of people around the world.

In October 2021, MrBeast, who has more than 82 million followers, started the #TeamSeas campaign to clean up the ocean along with fellow YouTuber Mark Rober, campaign director Matt Fitzgerald alongside a community of content creators and volunteers.

By January 2022 it had raised the full amount - thanks to more than 600,000 individual donations from across the world.

At the launch of the YouTube video "I Cleaned The World's Dirtiest Beach" on October 29, 2021 a lot of MrBeast/ocean-related YouTube videos from both big and small YouTubers, were uploaded at the same time. All of these videos were uploaded as a fundraiser specifically for Team Seas and included a link to the Team Seas website itself where people could donate to the project.

Just from less than an hour alone, the project already raised $300,000, and has raised at least $3,000,000 from the first day. That number has doubled to $6,000,000 for the next 12 hours, then $10,000,000 on 1 November 2021.

On 1 January 2022, just as the original goal time period was going to end, the fundraiser, which was at $26,000,000, reached $30,000,000 in donations after Austin Russell donated $4,000,000 to the project. Russell is the founder and CEO of LIDAR Company Luminar, and is officially the world's youngest self-made billionaire

Every single dollar #TeamSeas raises goes directly to two organisations – Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup. Although it has reached the initial campaign goal, #TeamSeas continues to take donations in hopes of carrying on removing more plastic waste from the world's oceans and rivers.