The Noah Beach Clean-up was held on Sunday 4th May 2014 in the beautiful Daintree National Park. We had an awesome turn out of 19 volunteers from Cape Tribulation, Port Douglas, Cairns, a holidaying couple from the Blue Mountains as well as a group of university students from the USA participating in the Wildlands Studies program.
For the morning we scoured the beach, up into the mangroves, storm surges and vegetation line of the beach to find all kinds of marine debris. There was 126 plastic drink bottles, 199 remnants of weather balloons, 2 sheets of corrugated iron, a tyre & rim and 3745 pieces of remnant hard plastic. My favourite item found was a glass bottle, still intact but had some how been melted and squashed completely flat.
In total the group recovered 18 bags of debris weighing in at 107kgs. We had a wonderful group of hard working volunteers, the weather was in our favour and it was a great feeling to have that much debris removed from the Daintree coastline.
Volunteer Megan Mill commented on the event: “It was one the first times it actually made me feel like I could make a difference to a community and for nature. I think everyone would benefit from participating in activities like that. It really made me want to participate more in my community when I get back home to the US. ”
I would like to thank everybody that came along and helped out with the clean-up and the sorting of the debris, as well as Ocean Safari for providing us with their Troopy and driver to transfer volunteers from Cape Tribulation to Noahs Beach.
Also thanks for support by the Queensland Government’s Friends of Parks Grant and the QPWS Rangers who picked up all the full bags, and the Douglas Shire for free disposal at the landfill.
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