LITTER-PICK CRUISES
‘Doing our bit’
Scotland’s west coast has been our primary holiday and cruising destination since the 1970s. Mike and I both grew up near Glasgow so spending time on Islay and Mull felt like being on a different planet – beautiful, unique and fragile.
Magical places such as these feed a child’s spirit and imagination and those early experiences led to my life-long love affair with the land and sea.
I once heard someone say: ‘Don’t expect anyone else to sort out a problem you’ve discovered. You do what you can.’ With this in mind I’ve been picking litter on Scotland’s shores for 30 years – everywhere from the Solway Firth to St Kilda. For the last 20 years I’ve been lucky to cruise much of Scotland’s mainland west coast and many of the islands.
I began in 2000, sailing with friends for the first five years. Mike and I met in 2007 and from then to 2015, we have been sailing – and collecting litter – on our Twister, Elida. Since 2016 we have been doing so on our Giles 38, Harambe, which we keep moored at Arisaig and Rhu. The joy of our holidays has always been tinged with sadness, bewilderment and, to be honest, anger, as we’ve found so many wonderful places that are badly polluted with mainly plastic waste.
WARRIORS AGAINST WASTE
We pick up what we can and accept that we often only make a small improvement. Sometimes others see us and ask us what we’re doing. We chat to them about the need for everyone to help tackle the marine pollution crisis and how many whales, seabirds and other marine mammals die every year because they ingest or get entangled in marine waste.
Most people ignore both us and the pollution on the shore, and I wonder if they have children or grandchildren, or if they think about the most important thing future generations will inherit from us: Planet Earth.
In December, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: ‘Humanity is waging war on nature... This is suicidal… To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken…’
I worked for the BBC for many years, including three years in Bristol, the home of the Natural History Unit. I occasionally had contact with Sir David Attenborough and others and was inspired by their
determination to raise awareness of what impact humans were having on the natural world and why we must alter our behaviour.
We can’t keep exploiting Earth or treating the planet like a playground. Earth gave us our lives and everything we have.
So, one of the ways Mike and I try to give a little back is by preparing to collect marine litter on every cruise – from a day sail to a month at sea – by having good-quality black bin and household waste bags, old shopping bags and rubber gloves aboard.
We decide how much waste we can collect on the basis of whether or not there’s going to be somewhere nearby ashore we can leave it for safe disposal. Otherwise we need to bring it aboard and store it until we find a recycling point.
We often use a boathook to grab stuff – everything from fishing gear and agricultural waste through to party balloons – when we’re underway, and we keep space free in a cockpit locker to store it. We focus on plastic, stuff made from artificial fibres or dangerous items that could injure wildlife.
We leave glass, wood and steel. Gaining the right attitude is almost as important as doing a litter pick. When waste makes it back to the shore, that’s the best chance we have to retrieve and dispose of it before the tide takes it away again.
A SAILOR’S RESPONSIBILITY
Few people like giving up any of their precious cruising time to pick marine litter. We certainly don’t, but our shores and seas desperately need help. Sailors sometimes anchor in places few others visit and these can be particularly polluted. During our 2020 summer cruise we roped in the creel fisherman Donald Holyoaks to help us dispose of the waste we had collected at the Ardmore Islands off Islay. We do what we can, however small. Even with shores that are heavily polluted, taking five minutes to fill up one shopping bag means the rubbish collected is no longer a threat to marine wildlife and, ultimately, no longer a danger to us.
Last year scientists discovered microplastic particles in human placentas for the first time. The health impact is as yet unknown but the plastics could cause longterm damage or upset an unborn baby’s developing immune system.
It’s all very sobering, and once you start noticing litter sinks, usually in places like the heads of lochs, it can be overwhelming.
No one person can solve this crisis, but if more people get involved in cleaning up, our cumulative actions will make an improvement in our environment. Our children and grandchildren should not have to inherit this immense problem from us.
One of the most important actions we all can take is to talk about marine pollution more frequently and encourage other seafarers, family and friends to get involved and make time to help clean up our ailing life support system: Planet Earth.