Beach Clean Stoer Beach – 5th August 2015
Litter is literally swamping our seas and it is washing up on many of Assynt’s beautiful beaches and bays. This litter is killing wildlife, looks disgusting and is a risk to our health.
Many marine animals are at risk from this litter either by entanglement or ingestion. Turtles mistake plastic bags for their favourite food, jellyfish! All too often the bags block their stomachs often leading to death from starvation. Seabirds often take plastic floating on the surface thinking it is food and over 90% of Fulmars found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs.
Plastic litter on our beaches has increased massively over the past two decades and it never degrades, it just gets smaller and smaller. These micro-plastic particles are now found in filter feeding animals and amongst the grains of sand on our beaches.
Come along and help
Clashnessie beach is cleaned of litter regularly throughout the year thanks to the hard work of a few of our residents. In addition a large skip is brought to Balchladich annually for a couple of weeks and several tonnes of litter are always removed from this beach, again due to the massive effort of a small number of residents. The photo shows some of the litter removed from Balchladich this year.
To help highlight this problem locally and make a further contribution to removing some of the litter from our environment Assynt Field Club has arranged a beach clean at Stoer beach on Wednesday 5th August from 2pm onwards.
Please come along and lend a hand for as long as you want to. Protective gloves will be available thanks to the generosity of Loch Duart Salmon but please wear suitable clothing and footwear, and bring plenty of water to drink.
Remember litter comes from many sources – the public, fishing activities and shipping, but it is all preventable as it is all down to our activities, no matter the source!
David Haines
Beach Clean Stoer Beach – 5th August 2015 Article originally published in the Assynt News July 2015 as encouragement for people to come along