MOSSEL BAY NEWS - The director of Oceans Research, the Mossel Bay company that trains overseas marine biology interns and advocates marine conservation, says even pre-schoolers can learn to conserve the environment.

Speaking to the Mossel Bay Advertiser after a beach clean-up from the St Blaize cave at the point to Beacon Point, Enrico Gennari said the pre-schoolers who took part from Little Lighthouse and Darling Ducks told him the beach was clean before they started looking closely.

But they as they began looking, they picked up straws, cigarette butts and pieces of glass.

The clean-up was part of the other organised clean-ups on beaches in the Mossel Bay area on Friday, 8 June, World Oceans Day.

The children were taught about the danger to the environment of single-use plastics.

"They loved the clean-up," Gennari said. "We taught them about recycling and the fact that you can use bamboo rather than plastic straws these days."

Gennari said Oceans Research, which is in the process of changing from a closed corporation to a Pty Ltd company, had brought more than 1 000 interns to Mossel Bay over the past eight years.

They came here because of the natural beauty and the high level of biodiversity. "If we don't protect and value the environment, this biodiversity will not exist for much longer," he says. 

Gennari surmised that the shark heads which washed up in the Mossel Bay area last week and were reported on in the Mossel Bay Advertiser came from trawlers that had caught them. "They cut off the heads, fins and tails." He said the shark meat was probably sent to Australia, where it is used for fish and chips. "Here in South Africa we are lucky. We still have hake, but if we continue the way we are, we will have none."

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