In 1986 Ocean Conservancy recognised the need to clean the marine environment and launched a campaign called International Coastal Clean-Up. This event has been running every year since by willing volunteers.
The Pinnacle Conservation team was asked to help out again with the beaches of Mossel Bay. The team geared up with their gloves and plastic bags and tackled De Bakke, Santos and Point.
From a distance, our beaches seemed fairly clean to the naked eye. When the team started picking up candy wrappers and other small plastic items, it didn't seem that concerning, but when a few candy wrappers became a lot of candy wrappers, the concern became evident.
In total, the team managed to pick up 20kg of litter, with most items being things that the average person might consider harmless to the environment.
"Some of the unusual items that were found on the beaches included two dead seals, a knife and a condom."
According to the International Coastal Clean-Up Report of 2014, approximately 648 000 volunteers participated in the campaign and over 5500 ton of litter was retrieved on beaches all over the world, which really stresses the concern of litter on beaches.
The Pinnacle team is glad that they were able to partake in this campaign and really hope that people would reconsider before littering on the beaches.
"Trash in the ocean doesn't fall from the sky – it falls from people's hands."
Andries Cilliers, JP Fourie, Sarel Serfontein, Kay Prinsloo and Vivien Stadler, the Pinnacle Conservation team, doing their bit to clean up beaches around Mossel Bay.
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