SPONSORED BEACH CLEAN #SaveOurOceans

Jack Rawlinson and Priyanka Chandi
Apr 17, 2018
2 min read

Guess who's back with our newest update! Now it's less than 2 months to go until we fly over to Sri Lanka and we cannot wait! It has been an incredible experience so far working hard to make this expedition happen and we want to thank everyone who has helped us so far! Our Chuffed page is still open and any donations are appreciated, as all of the money will go towards our scientific diving and resources One of the aims of our expedition is to raise awareness of the importance of looking after the marine life and the environment. We did this yesterday through a beach clean up! Our team travelled to Fairlie beach, a coastal area in the West of Scotland. It was a beautiful sunny day. We were armed with bin bags, litter pickers, gloves and the motivation to do some proper cleaning! We were slightly surprised to find that Fairlie beach appeared to have no coastal litter! Nevertheless, we got to work and dived into (no pun intended) the sandy coast. This was when we discovered that there was more litter than what met the eye. In Scottish beaches, the main types of coastal litter you can find are: plastic, glass, metal, cloth, polystyrene, paper, rubber and wood (Keep Scotland Beautiful, accessed 16/04/2018). We found all of these items when litter picking. What we also were concerned about was that we managed to find so much coastal litter, despite the fact that Scottish beaches (such as Fairlie beach) get cleaned regularly. It just goes to show how much waste does end up in our seas. We spent the whole morning and early afternoon litter picking, until the tide came in. We handed in our 10!! full bin bags to Ayrshire council, then got the train back to Glasgow. Overall, we found the beach clean up to be quite a mindful experience and it gave our team a chance to get to know each other a bit more in a relaxed environment. We'll be doing further beach clean ups in the some of the surrounding beaches in Nilavelli, as it is part of our lovely team researcher Ester's project - and we look forward to it.