Senior biology students at St Brendan’s College attended a marine debris workshop presented at their school by Tangaroa Blue in April, learning about the marine debris issue and how to collect data while doing a beach clean up.
In May the students used this information to complete two clean ups – one at local Bangalee Beach and the other one at a local creek system with an aim of also comparing the data between the two marine environments.
At the beach, the six students cleaned up 400m and collected 912 items filling 5 clean up bags. The totals included 241 bits of hard plastic, 115 bits of film plastic, 123 plastic lids and bottletops and 35m of rope. The students also discovered plastic resin pellets on the beach.
Tangaroa Blue would like to thank the students and teach Flavia Santamaria for their efforts and for sending through the data for the Australian Marine Debris Initiative database.
Photo: Teacher Dr Flavia Santamaria
Students top from left: Michael Walmsley, Wade Fickling, Tom Brose
Bottom from left: Yamba Bowie, Jacob Eden, Zane Gibbards
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