One of the nice things about living in a small rural community in a place to which many would apply the term 'remote' is that when there is some work that needs doing, something that impacts on us all, then there are always those who step up to help. We live by the sea in two directions, to the east and to the west, being at the root of the Kintyre peninsula, so dependant upon the wind direction the shorelines facing each way tend to collect rubbish. This may either be tossed deliberately into the sea, from boats or from the land, or else it may originate from sea-based industries, mostly fishing. A lot of this rubbish is plastic of one sort or another and this will gradually break up into smaller pieces when it reaches a rocky shore or even a sandy beach and gradually these small pieces accumulate along the shore or are blown inland into surrounding woodland. This does not sit well with many of us locally so we have organised beach cleaning parties where we try to pick up as much as we can then dispose of it sensibly.
Although we might try to arrange such events on days when the weather is kind to us this is not always possible as one recent event demonstrated. Our efforts to clean Escart Bay, a beach at the end of a long west facing sea loch, coincided with a westerly wind that most would not normally venture out into. Despite this the event was well attended, everyone being well wrapped up against the wind and, inevitably, the rain showers that came with it.
The physical part of picking up the rubbish from the shoreline is only part of the process. In order to monitor the state of the beach over time and to enable us to compare it with other beaches we try to document the amount and type of material we find. This is done by isolating one five metre section of the beach and recording a description of everything found there, something that is not easy to do when a strong wind is blowing.
Sadly the job all these volunteers are doing never leaves the beach totally clean because the smaller pieces of plastic become intermingled with the shoreline soil but we do what we can. Much of the plastic material we find is clearly fishing related, tiny rope strands from nets used in fishing activity and this may have originated many miles away before being carried by the currents onto our shores. It is disheartening to see so much of this locally but we do our best.
A rather more deliberate type of rubbish dumping also occurs in less frequented spots. A collection of old steel kitchen sinks clearly did not drift in from the sea by accident. They could only have been deliberately placed in the trees beside an old shoreside road by someone who had no thoughts regarding what this type of behaviour might lead to if we all did the same with our rubbish. Similarly when a number of very fresh looking beer cans, all of the same make, turn up on the shore this points to one individual tossing them carelessly away, perhaps from a boat, after drinking their favourite brew. These are things it is best not to dwell upon.
The next cleaning party was at a South facing beach in Loch Fyne, a place where we had a session last year, and we were all interested to see how much had come ashore there in the interim and what the rubbish consisted of. As it turned out there were very few larger pieces on the shoreline so we ended up crawling through the branches of brambles and other wild shoreline vegetation to get down to the tiny pieces of plastic mixed in with the sandy soil underneath. Old crisp packets, bottle tops, short lengths of rope were all dug out and recorded although this time we had almost no wind and the sun provided us with quite a warm day. Perhaps the most exciting find of the day was a knife, in perfect condition, buried at the top of the beach. We have a special container where we put 'sharps' that we find but in this case we all had a good laugh because the knife was a plastic one.
Mixing and chatting with a friendly group of like minded people adds to the pleasure of the beach party and brings a sense of achievement in doing some small thing to improve our world.
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