100,000 marine mammals and 1,000,000 seabirds die every year from marine debris but there is something that we can all do about it!
Every year since 2005, the middle weekend in October has seen hundreds of volunteers grab their gloves and bags to clean up their favourite stretch of coastline between Cape Leeuwin, Cape Naturaliste, Busselton and Perth in the South West of Western Australia. Initiated and organised by Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society, the annual Cape to Cape Beach Clean Up aims at removing as much rubbish from the coast as possible as well as creating a community awareness of the state of our coasts and oceans and the impacts that marine debris has on our ecosystem.
The weekend of 11 and 12 October 2008 saw the fourth annual Cape to Cape Beach Clean Up in the South West of Western Australia. Here are the statistics:
Number of volunteers - 571 (an increase from 274 in 2007)
Number of beaches/stretches of coastline cleaned - 81 (an increase from 47 in 2007)
Number of individual pieces of marine debris collected - 26,363
Weight of marine debris collected - 1,876kg
Number of bags filled - 357
Number of kilometres cleaned - 158.5km
percentage of marine debris made of plastic - 81%
Some of the big items: Plastic Bags 407; Plastic Bag Remnants 2131; Plastic Bottles 874; Glass Bottles 602; Pieces of Broken Glass 2256; Aluminium Cans 569; Shoes 228; Food Wrapping 884; Broken Pieces of Plastic 6098; Fishing Line 1432m; Rope 1960m; Strapping Bands 453m; Cylume Sticks 160; Cigarette Butts 1024; Cigarette Lighters 81; Syringes 9; Toothbrushes 20 and a $10 note!
What a fantastic effort by all involved!
To join in the 2009 Cape to Cape Beach Clean Up on October 10th & 11th 2009 visit www.oceancare.org.au
