HarbourKeepers & CoastKeepers Clean Up Australia Day 2008 - Activites Report

An amazing diversity of sea junk!

By David Roe, HarbourKeepers & CoastKeepers Coordinator

Clean ups are a simple way to contribute to marine conservation but the quality of the outcome in no way reflects the simplicity of the activity. Marine debris is a killer resulting in the death of 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles every year. This is the impact addressed by HarbourKeepers and CoastKeepers volunteers on Clean Up Australia Day in March.

HarbourKeepers and CoastKeepers worked with groups all along the NSW coast including most of our Fish Survey groups to complete underwater and foreshore clean ups. HarbourKeepers and CoastKeepers were involved in 11 events across NSW that together removed over 2.25 tonnes of rubbish! Between 122 volunteers a massive 456 work hours were donated - an outstanding effort!

Plastic bags were the most commonly found item and also one of the most lethal. Plastic bags take 20 to 1000 years to degrade and during this time become serial killers, responsible for the deaths of many animals, birds and fish.

The variety of the rubbish removed reflects today's throwaway consumer society. A team of HarbourKeepers divers that cleaned up Chowder Bay with Plunge Diving in Mosman found a child's pool slide that had been dumped; the large lumps of concrete attached to it dispelled any possibility that a freak wind blew it into the water.

Eco Divers teamed up with Ocean World to remove rubbish from around Manly Cove. Eco Divers are a Manly-based volunteer dive group that are active HarbourKeepers Fish Surveyors and monitor bycatch at Manly's shark nets amongst other projects. Plastic bags were commonly found items as well as unlimited amounts of cigarette butts leaching their thousands of toxic chemicals into the water.

Tidal considerations at Swansea Bridge demanded an early start for divers from the Charlestown Diving Academy who were in the water at 7am. They were rewarded with a collection of plastic and glass bottles and dismayed to find many bait bags. Bait bags are an extreme version of the plastic bag problem as they are impregnated with the smell of dead fish making them an irresistible - but deadly - temptation to hungry marine animals.

The Australia National University Scuba Club got stuck in at Redfin Wharf in Batemans Bay and can now start a recycling business! 12 shopping trolleys, 3 bikes, 4 camp chairs and 3 full bags of plastic and glass bottles were just part of their haul. Most alarmingly they removed a truck battery that thankfully had yet to leak its acid into the water.

A team of HarbourKeepers Fish Surveyors worked with Dive Centre Manly at Little Manly Beach. The main haul was sunscreen bottles, boogie board wrist straps and a viscous looking fishing lure. A large collection of unidentifiable pieces of plastic gives testament to how larger pieces of plastic breaks down into smaller pieces that become tempting morsels to birds, fish and animals, who find them easier to eat than to digest.

Divers from the Jervis Bay Divers Club (JBDC) completed one of the most technically challenging dives with chronic vis and a short window between tides. They also achieved a great haul. In the words of Leander Wiseman President of JBDC: The rubbish the divers pulled out from under Greenwell Point Jetty filled a 4.5m skip bin. Amongst the haul were lots of bottles, rope, wire, pipes, chairs, fishing tackle and big tangled clumps of fishing line. Volunteers were more surprised to find the microwave, several bicycles, and truck springs.

Crest Diving also in Jervis Bay worked with staff from Booderee National Park to give Murrays Beach boat ramp the underwater and foreshore treatment. A wallet with credit cards was an unexpected find, but a generous haul of cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bags, fishing tackle and assorted pieces of plastic were also removed from the water.

Fishing tackle was the main item for the Underwater Research Group (URG) of Sydney who cleaned up at Balmoral Beach, although an iPod and 2 mobile phones made a high tech appearance. URG divers also found a leatherjacket hooked and snagged to a pier footing by trailing fishing line. Happily the leatherjacket is now free and the fishing tackle back on dry land.

HarbourKeepers & CoastKeepers isn't only about diving and a group from the Art of Living worked on land at McMahons Point in the shadow of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Here the evidence of New Years Eve celebrations was found in the shape of thousands of cigarette butts, plastic and glass bottles and glow sticks in amongst the plastics and fishing tackle. An honourable mention goes to the gentleman who stopped throwing his cigarette butt on the floor when he saw our clean up team, and carefully placed it down the stormwater drain instead!

Tides and other commitments caused the South West Rocks Dive Centre to postpone their event until the Monday after work. But they showed great commitment by spending over 2 hours each in the water at Back Creek in South West Rocks. All the usual suspects were removed including plastics, tyres, wheel rims and fishing line.

Finally a team of CoastKeepers divers returned to Illawong Bay in Ku-ring-gai National Park. This is a long-term project where we have removed a jungle of fishing line and fishing tackle. After 40 dive hours we are starting to make an impression, but still filled 10 clean up bags with nothing but fishing line plus removed beach umbrellas, road signs, tyres, chairs and other junk.

So awesome effort, but not the end of the story. Matt from Plunge Diving tells me that 3 days after the clean up the swimming nets that they completely cleared were again clogged with rubbish. So our clean ups cannot be limited to one or two times a year, the scale of the problem is too great. But this problem wouldn't exist if everyone understood the impact of debris on marine wildlife and took more care with disposing their rubbish.

Get involved in HarbourKeepers marine conservation activities by registering here.