February 2012 saw the students from St Bernard’s College Santa Monica Campus back on the beach for a clean up as part of their camp activites. The February clean up was from Moggs Creek, west to Grassy Creek – mostly open ocean beaches with lots of debris from summer beach users. There was also a large amount of timber washed up – 45 pieces, all treated pine and all between two and three metres in length. There were also lots of timber wedges – all of which points to them having come off container ships.
The February totals cam to 409 items removed from 3km of coastline, weighing 24kgs and filling up 3 bags, plus some of the timber too big for bags.
The March clean up covered a more inaccessible part of the coast – from Cathedral Rock, east to Grassy Creek. We haven’t clean up this area for about 10 months – and it showed. Again, there was lots of timber spars and wedges, but the biggest single item was polystyrene and styrofoam of assorted shapes and sizes – much of it appeared to be packaging and boxes. We actually ran out of bags on this day and had to improvise with large sheets of plastic – mostly because the styrofoam was so bulky.
The March totals came to 761 itmes removed from 3km of beach, weighing 14kg and filling 6 bags!
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