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Whitsunday 2014 Clean Up19th December 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing Being the very last trip for the year we decided to return to Grimston Point, a location on the mainland that is known to accumulate debris directly from Airlie Beach. There are also generally a lot of boat pieces found at this location, and today was no exception. The extremely hot weather conditions this time of year created a huge challenge for our determined volunteers, but they managed to fill the barge before 12:30 - an amazing effort by all involved! 12 volunteers 5th December 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing In our second to last trip for the year we decided to return to South Molle as it had been just over three months since we had managed to clean all the beaches on this island in a single day. There was much less marine debris to be found on the beaches, which was particularly obvious to our long-term volunteers that remembered being stuck on just one beach for hours. The sheer number of south-east facing beaches on South Molle still kept our volunteers busy, but once again we were able to leave knowing that every single beach had been cleaned! 12 volunteers 18th - 21st November 2014Cruise Whitsundays - EXPEDITION The southern Whitsunday Islands are known to be highly impacted by marine debris, being the first point of contact as debris enters the Whitsunday region with the south-east trade winds. However, they are also the most difficult to clean due to their distance from Airlie Beach. A four day expedition, based at Linderman Island, was therefore determined to be the most effective way to target these beaches. The efforts of the expedition team were unbelievable with 2.7 tonne of marine debris being removed from only 10 beaches! 12 volunteers 15th November 2014Reef Catchments It was time to head north again with the long rocky beach on Gumbrell Island and the first two targeted beaches at George's Point having surprisingly little debris. It was a slightly different story on the third beach though with 154 kilograms of marine debris removed in addition to a 120 kilogram dingy that had definitely seen better days. With only three trips remaining for 2014 the minimal marine debris continues to highlight the difference the Whitsunday Marine Debris Removal Program is making for the region. 10 volunteers 30th October 2014BMC and Charter Yachts Australia The continuation of the steady weather meant we were able to finish the month with one last trip, bringing our total to 36 marine debris removal trips being run in 2014. This number of trips has resulted in the Program achieving an amazing coverage of the Whitsunday region this year, with all of the bays and beaches having now being targeted by a marine debris removal trip and this reflecting in the smaller amount of marine debris that is currently being removed per trip. This is a great result and puts us in a great position to tackle all the newly arriving marine debris that occurs with the harsher weather conditions each wet season. 11 volunteers 27th October 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing Today marks an amazing milestone, being the 150th trip since the launch of the Whitsunday Marine Debris Removal Program in July 2009!! We also released 'Bunny" after this beautiful little green turtle had returned to full health after being cared for in the Whitsunday Turtle Rescue Centre. With so many amazing achievements occurring we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our volunteers, partners and sponsors for their invaluable support over the years! 11 volunteers 26th October 2014BMC It seems like every time we go to Saba Bay there is a plentiful amount of rubbish to collect, and today was no different, with our data indicating that this is definitely the most impacted Bay in the Whitsunday region. Our volunteers therefore had their work cut out for them, but they were all up to the challenge. Marine debris was removed from all six beaches, including the aptly named 'Heartbreaker Beach' that is always covered with rubbish! 11 volunteers 23rd October 2014David Edge Marine Contracting 75 kgs collected 26th September 2014Reef Catchments The great weather conditions today allowed us to return to Gloucester Island to finish what we started earlier in the month and clean the marine debris from the remaining beaches. These four beaches were much less impacted than the two that were targeted on our last trip, but with the debris mainly consisting of really small plastic pieces, each beach took a long time to clean. The last two trips have therefore removed 398 kilograms of debris from Gloucester Island, which equates to only about 33 kilograms per month accumulating on these beaches, and suggests that we only need to target this hotspot once a year to deal with the newly arriving marine debris. 12 volunteers 11th September 2014BMC With a second day of perfect weather we decided to head north, as it was over a year since we last cleaned the beaches of these islands. The beach on Rattray Island is relatively small, so our volunteers made quick work of removing the 92 kilograms of primarily plastic debris before we moved on to two extremely impacted beaches on Gloucester Island. A huge 273 kilograms of marine debris was removed before we had to head for home, but with six beaches still left to clean, we will have to return to Gloucester again soon. 9 volunteers 10th September 2014BMC Finally a glass out!!! So it was with great excitement that we were able to get back out on the water and continue the job of cleaning the highly impacted bays on Whitsunday Island. Our first stop was Turtle Bay, with three beaches being targeted and 112 kilograms of marine debris being removed. We then could not resist the opportunity provided by the combination of good weather and good tides to head to the beautiful Solace Bay where a surprisingly little amount of marine debris was removed from an additional three beaches. 11 volunteers 27th August 2014Reef Catchments Thankfully the wind eased off enough to allow us to undertake another marine debris removal trip, this time for our amazing STARFISH sponsor Reef Catchments. We had a smaller number of volunteers on today, with everyone doing an amazing job of removing marine debris from two long and highly impacted beaches at the bottom of Long Island. Given that these beaches were cleaned only six months (to the day) earlier, the amount of re-accumulated marine debris was quite surprising. 9 volunteers 20th August 2014Everyone's Environment Grants The weather has been incredibly difficult this month, but we were finally able to get out on the water again for our final trip thanks to the funding that we recieved from Everyone's Environment Grants. The pressure was really on with limited cleaning time available due to the out-going tide, but the volunteers really stepped up to the occasion removing the marine debris from every impacted beach on South Molle in only 3 and a half hours!! This is a remarkable result and really does show the long-term difference that the Whitsunday Marine Debris Removal Program is making for the region. None of our achievements would be possible without the efforts of our amazing volunteers and being able to spend a few extra hours on the beach enjoying our efforts was a special bonus of the trip today! 12 volunteers 1st August 2014Everyone's Environment Grants We decided to return to Genesta Bay to try and finish the job of removing marine debris from this very long, and highly impacted beach. It soon became obvious that it would take us the whole day on this beach alone, with our amazing volunteers getting a great workout as they walked the many kilometres up and down the beach while carrying their bags of marine debris. It was definitely Eco Boot Camp today!! It was also fantastic to have an independent film crew on-board for the day to experience and take some footage of one of our marine debris removal trips. 12 volunteers 17th July 2014Everyone's Environment Grants Today we decided to return to Mackeral Bay to focus on the beaches that we ran out of time to target during our trip in June. This bay is definitely not for the faint-hearted with lots of small rocky beaches collecting lots of larger plastic items and an extraordinary amount of rope. We had last targeted this hotspot in November last year, with approximately 600 kilograms collecting on these beaches in the six months - a positive result that indicates we need to return to this location twice a year to deal with the current rate of accumulation. 12 volunteers 10th July 2014Everyone's Environment Grants With the amazing weather allowing back-to-back trips we decided to once again target Whitsunday Island, but to focus on some of the more easterly bays. A total of three beaches were cleaned in a great effort by the volunteers with plastic being the usual suspect, however some large pieces of sawn timber and lengths of heavy weight mooring line were also found. It was noticeable that these beaches had accumulated much bigger and heavier items than was found yesterday, suggesting that the lighter debris drifts further up towards Fitzalan Pass, while the heavy and less buoyant items are thrown up on the beaches closer to Solway Passage by the prevailing winds. 11 volunteers 9th July 2014Everyone's Environment Grants Today was the first trip out of five that we will be running thanks to retained funding from our project with Everyone's Environment Grants. With absolutely stunning conditions on the water we headed to Turtle Bay and our ever enthusiastic volunteers proceeded to clean three beaches before the outgoing tide made further access impossible. 'Backbreaker' beach again left its mark with all of the volunteers due to the unbelievable concentration of plastic pieces that seem to accumulate at this location, ranging from large drums, soft plastics and millions of tiny plastic fragments - it is lucky this beach is quite short or we would never be able to get it clean in a day! 12 volunteers 28th June 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing Another beautiful day and another trip made possible thanks to our partnership with the Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing. Our target location today was two bays at Hook Island that unfortunately seem to accumulate marine debris much faster than we are able to remove it, with the aptly named 'heartbreaker' beach once again living up to its name with huge amounts of both hard and soft plastic items found littering the entire length of this beach. As usual our volunteers all worked extremely hard to remove the debris, but we are obviously going to have to target these particular locations more often to keep on top of the incredibly high rate of accumulation on these beaches. 12 volunteers 24th June 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing Today consisted of almost glass-out conditions, but the difficult tide resulted in the beaches of three different islands being the targeted throughout the day. These three islands have been the focus of many marine debris removal trips over the years, however, the extremely large number of beaches mean there are always locations found that are still full of rubbish. This is particularly true of the many small beaches that are found in Driftwood Bay on the south-east side of the Hamilton Island Airport. All the usual items of light-weight plastic were removed, however, the last beach turned out to be a veritable thong mine leading to many interesting hypotheses concerning the cause of the seemingly great number of thong-less individuals that must roaming the planet! 12 volunteers 21st June 2014Reef Catchments It is always very exciting when we are able to explore new hotspot locations, with Genesta Bay having never previously been targeted with a marine debris removal trip. It was therefore no surprise to find that this picturesque beach, complete with white sand and coconut trees was loaded with marine debris!! Our volunteers worked extremely hard and removed a huge amount of rubbish, but this is an extremely long beach with only about one third being able to be cleaned before it was time to head for home. We will therefore aim to return to this beautiful location again in the near future to finish the job. 10 volunteers 3rd June 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation We again took advantage of the smallest break in the weather so that we could target our very last hotspot location for our project with the Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation. It had been 180 days since we last got to this beach, and it definitely showed, with more kilograms removed than any of our previous monitoring trips. 177 kilograms of debris was removed before we continued to George's Point where we removed a further 96 kilograms from two beaches. Thank you again to the amazing volunteers, who not only worked extremely hard, but also put up with the wet and wild conditions on the way home! 11 volunteers Julian SmallwoodArmit Island 28th May 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation We finally got a break in the weather and were able to target four more hotspot beaches for our Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation project. 211 kilograms of marine debris was removed from the two South Molle beaches, which is almost exactly the same amount that was removed on the previous trip in February. Amazingly, the two beaches on Long Island contained only 42 kilograms of marine debris, which was much less than the trip in February, with a 22 kilogram buoy also being removed off the rocks between the two hotspot beaches. The pressure was really on to get to all of these hotspot beaches in the one day, so a huge thank you to all the volunteers for their extremely hard work to make this possible! 11 volunteers 10th May 2014Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority It was with great pleasure today that we were able to take six Australian Awards Fellows from Mexico and two members of GBRMPA to Roma Point on South Molle to show them the impacts of marine debris in the Whitsunday region and have them contribute to debris removal. The group picked up more than 80 kg of rubbish on the beach, a remarkable amount since only three months had passed since this small beach had last been cleaned! Our visitors were able to appreciate the need for the Whitsunday Marine Debris Removal Program to be constant and on-going to protect our precious marine life from the serious impacts of marine debris. Once the beach was cleared of all marine debris, the group headed back for a tour of Eco Barge HQ and the Whitsunday Turtle Rescue Centre, where it was lucky enough to meet ‘Delilah’, a beautiful green turtle that is currently in care and hear the amazing story of the establishment and growth of Eco Barge. 11 volunteers 2nd May 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation 10 volunteers 1st May 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation 8 volunteers 28th March 2014Cruise Whitsundays - UNDERWATER MARINE DEBRIS 5 volunteer divers 27th March 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing 7 volunteers 23rd March 2014Everyone's Environment Grants - UNDERWATER MARINE DEBRIS 7 volunteer divers 16th March 2014Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sports and Racing 12 volunteers 16th March 2014Everyone's Environment Grants - UNDERWATER MARINE DEBRIS 6 volunteer divers 27th February 2014Reef Catchments 10 volunteers 17th February 2014Caring for our Country 8 volunteers 16th February 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation and Everyone's Environment Grants 19 volunteers 15th February 2014Caring for our Country 8 volunteers 14th February 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation 11 volunteers 21st January 2014Caring for our Country 10 volunteers 20th January 2014Caring for our Country 10 volunteers 19th January 2014Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation 9 volunteers 18th January 2014Everyone's Environment Grant - UNDERWATER DEBRIS 7 volunteer divers 7th January 2014Caring for our Country 10 volunteers |
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