Year 6 students from Portside Christian College in Adelaide headed back down to Semaphore Beach on November 23rd to continue their monitoring of marine debris along the coastline.
The students had been at the beach in August and were keen to see the differences in the marine debris they would find with the seasons changing and more people heading to the beach. The clean up was conducted along the same 1.2km of beach south of the Semaphore Jetty as in August and here is a summary of the data that the students collected.
There was an increase in both the number of marine debris items and weight collected, going from 303 pieces weighing 21kg in August to 404 pieces weighing 45.2kg in November. This was in part to several metal stakes and alot of road bitumen found on the beach. Also an increase in beach user debris with the number of cigarette butts increasing from 6 in August to 39 in November!
All data has been submitted into the Australian Marine Debris Database which is being used by communities, industry and government agencies to identify the sources of marine debris and then work on solutions to prevent rubbish from ending up in the ocean in the first place.
Portside students will be heading back to Semaphore in March 2013 to continue their marine debris research.
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