About 35 residents attended the Strandlopers presentation in Crassula Hall on Monday 7 October. Since May 2019 this team has covered 194 locations along a third of the South African coastline. In October they walked 225km along the coastline from Rooiels to De Dam over nine days.
The survey method they use is to take three “10m x 2m” transects every 5 kms. The data capture is done electronically using a Cybertracker app on the team’s cell phones and is later downloaded to reports on spread sheets.
Other individual surveys are done on fishing rope, trawl nets, squid jigs, crab pots, monofilament (the type of lightweight line that fishermen use), micro plastic, plastic bottles and plastic lids. They also survey the important oyster catchers and penguins.
Nurdles also have been recorded and there have been a number of containers lost off the South African coastline, in addition to what goes down the stormwater drains from plastic industries.
Their research has evolved into four fields: ocean plastic, ghost fishing, lead poisoning of marine fauna and climate change.
The data capture is done and recorded in a scientific way. This should convince some local governments to improve waste collection services in communities living next to rivers, where waste is often dumped or gets washed away in storms.
As Conservancies that are interested in marine life and cleaning beaches of litter, we will follow them on the net and wish them well in the future.
Thank you Shellie of Pringle Bay for providing overnight accommodation at no charge and to both Shellie and Galia, Betty’s Bay, for organising the presentation at short notice.
As a volunteer citizen science NPO, the Strandlopers are dependent on sponsorship and donations for these expeditions. Follow the Strandlopers on: https://www.strandloperproject.org/
Barbara Jenman
Photos: Louise du Preez for her pictures of some of the Strandloper presentation slides and the group at Crassula Hall