Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society - Protecting Our Oceans

By Jennifer Parkhurst

While on Fraser Island I divide my time between observing/photographing the dingoes, and picking rubbish up from the beaches. Both pursuits are my passions.

I have lived at Rainbow Beach for nearly 7 years and visit Fraser Island daily to observe and photograph the dingoes. In the early days while visiting the Island, I noticed that there was a huge amount of rubbish on the beach, especially in the many creeks on the eastern side of the island.

The rubbish was literally choking these creeks which should have been pristine, especially in a World Heritage Area.

Day after day I drove past the same pieces of rubbish. Eventually, sick of seeing it, I took it apon myself to clean the beach, and have been doing so nearly every day since. It has been an interesting journey and I’ve learnt a lot about the environment along the way

The Cape to Cape Beach Clean Up 2008 was held over the weekend of October 11 and 12. We had an amazing response with over 500 volunteers helping to clean beaches from Augusta to Mandurah in Western Australia!

Over the next week 8 schools from Dunsborough to Augusta will be participating in clean ups and presentations on marine debris turning the clean up weekend into a week long event!

We will be collating data over the next few weeks and put together a report on everything we found.

Thank you to all volunteers and supporters for the help in making this year's clean up the most successful event!

Keep posted for further information on what was found.

Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society is thrilled to be awarded this year's Western Australia Environment Award for Prevention of Littering and Illegal Dumping!

The South West Marine Debris Project, which has been running since 2004, has removed an amazing 200,000 items of debris from South West beaches with the help of more than 650 volunteers, helping to protect our wildlife and seabirds from deadly marine debris. 

This year's Cape to Cape Beach Clean Up was held over the weekend of October 11 and 12, and more than 500 volunteers registered to clean up beaches from Augusta to Mandurah in Western Australia. A report is currently being collated listed all debris collected as well as recommendations to help keep our marine ecosystem clean and healthy. 

To see the Minister's press release on the awards, visit http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/Results.aspx?ItemID=130736

The new version of the Marine Debris Datasheet is online now!

The new PDF form allows you to enter the data collected after a clean up event in to the form on your computer and email the filled in form to us at Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society. The 2008 Datasheet can be downloaded by clicking here or going through to the Debris Collection Datasheets area of the Downloads section.

All that is required to do this is Adobe Acrobat Reader which is freely available for all platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux). To download Acrobat Reader go to www.adobe.com and click on the Get Reader icon.

The data entered in the form can be automatically emailed through to our specific data collection email address by clicking on the Submit via email button in the form or manually sent as an attachment to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Let's hope that this weekend's clean up is as successful as last year's event and I look forward to sorting through lots of data sent in with the new forms!