Taking out ocean trash

VOLUNTEERS have removed more than 100,000 pieces of rubbish from beaches in Tasmania’s South-West, highlighting the struggle to keep the oceans clean.

The 33-member team returned to Hobart yesterday after spending 10 days on the annual South West Marine Debris Cleanup expedition, scouring the area’s World Heritage beaches for rubbish that has washed up or been dumped there.

They returned with a record haul of 112,117 pieces of rubbish, mostly fragments of plastic.

That figure is up significantly on the 71,366 items removed on last year’s trip and it takes the total number of pieces collected over the past 19 years to more than half a million.

The flotilla of five boats left Hobart on March 1 and headed south to Recherche Bay before cleaning beaches at locations including Schooner Cove, Clayton’s Corner, Port Davey, Spain Bay, Norman’s Cove, Bond Bay, Wilson Bight and Southport.

The volunteers enjoyed a run of favourable weather conditions, enabling them to reach several areas which had not been accessed in more than five years.

Expedition co-ordinator and environmental scientist Matt Dell said “a toxic wave of plastic is trashing our oceans” with much of the debris originating well outside Tasmania.

“Marine debris travels across the seas and washes ashore on some of the planet’s most isolated and spectacular beaches in western Tasmania,” he said.

“With total worldwide plastic production doubling every 10 years, the amount of plastic that is washing ashore is likely to get much worse without a concerted effort to properly dispose or recycle used plastics.

“The annual clean-up keeps our most precious wild places clean and is a key part of the global effort to fight the wave of polluting rubbish that’s trashing our oceans.”

The clean-up crew’s return to Hobart coincided with the release of results from last weekend’s 28th annual Clean Up Australia Day activities. An estimated 16,860 Tasmanians took part, clearing a predicted 625 tonnes of rubbish.