The students from St Bernard’s College’s Santa Monica Campus participated in a very wintery July beach clean up along Victoria’s surf coast. Mark Smith from Santa Monica reported: “We have been having some very wild and cold weather down here with king tides and big swells. Hence most of the exposed beaches have suffered severe erosion, with many beach access points closed to the public.
Our collection day was particularly cold – about 10 degrees, with a strong, biting onshore and squalls! Hence our time was limited.
We chose to collect in the two protected spots – Aireys Inlet Estuary and Grassy Creek river mouth, for obvious reasons. The Estuary is proving a very efficient catchment for plastics – most of the 1221 pieces collected were from here and most were less than the size of a five cent piece! A total of 15kg was removed from the 300m of beach survey.
Hoping for better conditions for our August clean up and some photos to come!
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