Santa Monica students hit the beach again in August as part of the Surf Coast Marine Debris Project. Once again a large haul of cigarette butts and other plastic and glass items. The clean up day had wild and woolly conditions with big winds, solid swell and strong currents – beaches are changing shape overnight. We have also had an enormous amount of rain that has washed out all the stormwater and flushed the creeks and rivers into the ocean. The ocean has been quite discoloured for about ten days now – and it is still raining!

Photos to come, so check back soon!

The Santa Monica boys returned to the five km stretch of beach from Moggs Creek to Grassy Creek for their July clean up. We hadn’t collected debris on this stretch since way back in April so it was interesting to see what had been washed up. We highlighted cigarette butts as our focus this week – with a promise of a block of chocolate for the group for every 200 butts they could find! There is nothing like chocolate to motivate 15 year old boys – we ended up with 1010 butts in all.

Other than that there was the usual array of discarded bait bags and tangled fishing line – hooks and sinkers still attached – left by the surf fishermen who, as a group, need some educating about the impact of their negligence on the beach environment.

The Santa Monica Boys have been busy again. This month we covered a different stretch of beach, covering the 3.5 km from Aireys Inlet to Moggs Creek. We are now monitoring the coast from Aireys Inlet to Grassy Creek – about 8.5km, alternating which half of it we cover each month. Next month we’ll be back to the Moggs to Grassy section.

We got some interesting results. The mouth of the Painkalac Estuary at Aireys Inlet alone had a couple of hundred tiny pieces of plastic, most smaller than a 5 cent piece. The beach sections were pretty clean apart from where there is regular beach access. Note that there were a lot less cigarette butts this time because we didn’t take in Archway Beach, where tourist and backpacker buses stop for a break on their Ocean Road tours. Last time we found about 250 butts at this beach access alone. Students are planning to contact the Shire about this with some data and lobby them to provide bins for smokers.

Here are some pictures from the collection day.

Students created reports after participating in a Marine Debris Display presented by Anita Kelly from Tangaroa Blue in March 2010. Below are some of the reports that students wrote showing what they learnt from the display and their thoughts on the marine debris issue.