My thanks to:
Barbara Jenman and all the site supervisors in Betty’s Bay
Robert Keyzer who helped coordinate the ICC in the Hanglkip villages and supply the ICC data forms to all the Betty’s Bay sites. He is also analyzing the sample bags from each site.
Ronni van der Westhuizen who helped to collect and transport the bags of trash to the Betty’s Bay drop-off facility
The Maties Underwater Club (MUC) divers: I hope that next time that they will have great diving weather!
Everyone who helped on the ICC day to do an “Every day do one small act for biodiversity”
Overall, in the Hangklip villages: 180 people helped to collect 120 bags at 14 sites.
In Betty’s Bay, there were eight ICC sites:
Baumgartner Place, Silver Sands beach
Five bags were collected from this site, which extended across Silver Sands Beach. There were seven volunteers, one of whom had already done a solo clean-up on the Thursday before the official event on Saturday, 20 September. The area behind the volunteers in these pictures was heavily littered with plastic —enough to fill one bag on its own.
Items collected from the beach included bottle tops, bottles, straws, microplastics, glowsticks, condoms and wrappers, cigarette butts, lollipop sticks, earbuds and fishing line. The volunteers were upbeat and enthusiastic, proud to be contributing to the care of the pristine beaches in Betty’s Bay.
Much of the debris appears to be left by fishermen, another reason why our Marine Protected Area (MPA) should be designated a “no-take zone” to safeguard our marine environment and its resources for future generations. In short: no more fishing in Betty’s Bay.
Patrick Bolttler
Watsonia Road, Silver Sands beach
Ronnie and his helpers met at Watsonia and cleaned that area of Silver Sands.
Ronnie van der Westhuizen
Draadbaai
Thanks to Wessel, Ruargh, Paul, Louwrens and Cilla for helping to clear up at Draadbaai. Louwrens picked up lots of glass, which made his bag heavy!
Zelda Botma
Stony Point:
The International Coastal Clean-up (ICC) and the “Dive Against Debris” (DAD) at Stony Point:
We watched the weather, hoping for a calm day for the clean-up, as it’s not fun trying to pick up litter in the wind! It blows the litter and the bags adding a rather unpleasant challenge! Saturday presented us with a “clean-up friendly” day but, sadly, it was not “dive friendly”.
The swell was strong and the dive masters, Ben and Lenize, assessed the conditions and made the decision to cancel the dive for safety reasons. So disappointing. The students from the Maties Underwater Club (MUC) had travelled to Betty’s Bay the day before, been generously hosted by a family in Sunny Seas on Friday evening, unpacked all their gear at Stony Point and were ready for the go ahead to start changing into their dive gear. However, it was a “no go”.
To the credit of this positive and enthusiastic group of students, they made Plan B and joined us for the ICC in Stony Point and along the coast.
About 19 volunteers from MUC, BBC, some BBC Penguin-Pals and other residents armed themselves with big yellow bags, and headed off in various directions from Stony Point to remove trash from the coastal area and roads nearby.
On their return, their bags contained lots of fishing line – a reflection of the fishing in the MPA area, and the lack of cleaning up by the anglers.
Other items in the trash bags included: plastic cold drink bottles, beer bottles, danger tape, straws, condom packets, broken pieces of glass, chips and sweet packets, paper cups, takeaway cartons, rope, a pair of scissors, thick cord, cigarette boxes, bits of broken plastic, piping, cardboard and bits of wood. A brave volunteer picked up a very smelly five-liter container that probably had bait in it, in the penguin colony.
The ages of the volunteers ranged from 18 to 82, and included students from Germany and America. Anyone can help clean up!
We gave the ICC “Top Volunteer” certificate to the MUC students for all their effort in coming to Betty’s Bay and their help in the ICC.
Carol Clark
Main Beach: Sea Way
It was great to see so many folk out collecting litter for the ICC, thank you! We cleaned from Sea Way to Main Beach and back. By far the majority of items collected were fishing line – balls of it, strips of it, twisted around kelp, etc. Sadly, we also saw a dead tern and a dead seal pup, which we reported.
Sandy Immelman
Main Beach: from the car park
Thanks to Hannelie, Dries, Mercia, Sandra and to the most energetic Gary who emptied the bin at the lifesavers hut into two full bags. It was a real treat to see an otter surfing the waves onto the beach.
Gerda and Johan Theron picked up trash between the Dawidskraal Rivers, which is a bird sanctuary area.
Thanks to Jannie who picked up all the Betty’s Bay bags in his bakkie, excluding those tagged as sample bags, and transported them to the Betty’s Bay drop off.
Barbara Jenman
Jocks Bay
Pictures of the Jocks Bay clean-up crew and the trash we collected. Five volunteers collected two full bags. Thanks to Wendy, Gordon, Alta and Susan.
In addition, Alta and I filled the big yellow bag (bottom right in the picture) from a 15 m section of the stream just below Clarence Drive, alongside Waterfall Road.
Viv von der Heyden
Sunny Seas: Dolphin Drive, Abalone and Luckhoff area
The Sunny Seas Cleanup resulted in 32 bags collected by 20 volunteers, including Carole Roberts, Dorrienne Maes, Anita Louw who each coordinated a group. Three teams combed a small beach enclave, verges and ditches, which span just over two kms. The items collected ranged from cans, bottles and plastic bags, to unsecured debris blown from building sites, which was mostly destined to end up in the ocean at some stage. Herewith, a snapshot of some of our enthusiastic volunteers and the final load en route to the transfer station!
Dorrienne Maes