Beachwatch 2008

On arrival I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and tidy Borthwen beach in Rhoscolyn (Anglesey) looked but 2 hours later our team of Golden Lion members and their families had managed to collect 9kg of rubbish. Now bearing in mind that the majority of the debris collected was small bits of plastic individually weighing practically nothing, this is quite a haul.
Over 20 volunteers were willing to give up their time on Sunday 21 st September in aid of Beachwatch 2008.
Split into pairs and provided with gloves, litter pickers and a bin bag the volunteers scoured the beach from end to end, from the high tide line to sand dune searching for every last bit of manmade rubbish! Besides the value of clearing the beach of this wildlife endangering junk the volunteers also carefully surveyed what was collected, each pair completing a data sheet as they went. We found allsorts, from party popper to panty liner but after collating all the data there were obvious ‘worst offenders’ especially in categories like fishing nets, rope, and sweet wrappers. Oh and I nearly forgot our friend the cotton bud stick, we found 75 of them!

Now that I have added all this data together its ready to be sent off to the Marine Conservation Society to be added to the other 400 beaches around the UK and hopefully provide some valuable information.
All in all the day was a huge success wrapped up with a dive and BBQ on what turned out to be one of our few sunny days this year.
Once again I would like to say a huge thank you to Travis Perkins for providing our ‘pickers’ with gloves and to Makro for providing our refreshments but especially to all the volunteers who showed up, I hope you all had a nice time.

Thank you
View photos here - Survey results comming soon!