We were very grateful to be invited to the University of Swansea to take part in the Marine Conservation clean up event. The student union arranged for volunteers to come from local groups, businesses, as well as students, of course!
Loading up our kit, we were happy to be of help, ensuring that everyone had the tools they needed to clean the beach easily and safely.
Whilst on first glance this beach appeared very clean, there was an overwhelming amount of small plastic pieces in the sand. We also found lots of cut pieces of netting and fishing wire that had become entangled with seaweed and other debris. These tiny pieces of microplastic and ghost gear can be especially harmful to marine life as they are often ingested, causing a whole host of problems for the animals who consume it.
We cleaned for two hours over a relatively concentrated part of the beach, however the sheer number of microplastic pieces meant that we had out work cut out for us, just clearing this small section of sand.
Despite how small a majority of the pieces of litter were we still managed to collect 12 bags of recyclable rubbish and 4 bags of non-recyclables. A great success for only 2 hours of work. Thank you to the University of Swansea for inviting us to take part, we had a great day on the beach and cant wait to return.
