As a fundraiser for Country Week, the JBDHS team participated in a rubbish pickup on the coastal path from Cook St to Hasting St Jurien Bay on Tuesday 7th September after school. It was great to see the team engage in this activity in a very positive manner, although it was reported that it was disappointing to see the sheer amount of rubbish littering our beautiful coastline. There were approximately 10 large bags of rubbish collected with 858 individual pieces of rubbish weighing approximately 50kg! This included a panel from a boat, a pallet, numerous cigarette butts and plastic bags and bottles, paper, cardboard and wood and some unusual items including a pair of shoes and a pair of jocks. The students participated in the survey to record rubbish collected and of course wore protective gloves! Well Done to the Country Week team on the clean up. Thanks to Mr Brian Abbey and Miss Jen Heal for attending the initiative. The Jurien Bay District High School team would like to sincerely thank the Shire of Dandaragan for the sponsorship of the team.
The Shire of Dandaragan wishes to thank the students pictures above and wishes all the team the best of luck for Country Week 2010.

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.