Our Lady’s beach clean in Angus

Children from Our Lady’s RC Primary School in Perth visited East Haven yesterday to take part in a Marine Conservation Society beach survey and clean.

It comes after the pupils welcomed Roseanna Cunningham MSP, cabinet secretary for environment, to their school in January to present her with their findings on marine litter.

The children have been learning about the problem of pollution at sea and supporting the #wildbottlesighting campaign, despite some having never visited the seaside.

They took the opportunity to go to the beach on the Angus coastline yesterday and help collect data about the types of litter that are impacting Scotland’s landscape and marine life.

Margaret Sharkey, a P3 teacher at Our Lady’s Primary, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for our children to go to the beach and see the scale of the problem for themselves.

“A number of them have never been to a beach before, so we’ll be giving them a first look at Scotland’s beautiful coastline, not just the litter too often found on it.

“During our project on water and marine life, the children were very surprised to find out that a huge amount of the litter thrown away in Perth makes its way on to our beaches.”

Catherine Gemmell, Scotland conservation officer for the Marine Conservation Society, said: “I am delighted to be meeting up again with the amazing young campaigners.”