Welcome to the very full October/November news sheet.
Thank you to everyone who has been able to join an event over the last month, it has been so, so busy, but it has been brilliant to see you and I hope you have gone away with more information about mismanaged waste in our environment, and enjoyed yourselves! The reports here are only a small thank you. A more in depth analysis is now available on our website here.
And every time someone signs up for this news sheet we feel that what we do is validated, we are not alone in attempting to create long term sustainable change through our own individual actions.
Strandliners is a growing family and it is all of you who play an important role supporting and motivating us to do more for the environment. If anyone has questions or thoughts about our work please do get in touch. At some point we hope to open a regular monthly online catch up as well.
Lastly, if anyone has any spare time and wishes to help with jobs to keep the work going, please email me at strandlinerscic@gmail.com. If we all do a little, then more can be achieved with less.
Forever indebted to all of you,
Andy Dinsdale
Future Events
We still need to be aware of COVID guidelines so events can still change.
River Rother
The Great Nurdle Hunt
10am to 12noon, Saturday 16th October
This event will involve searching for nurdles and bio-beads as well as other micro plastic in the riverbank (salt marsh & mud!). Fascinating to get up close with this plastic pollution that most people overlook. Meeting at the small parking area by Monk Bretton Bridge, New Road, Rye.
Please email strandlinersevents@gmail.com to register.
River Cuckmere
The Great Nurdle Hunt
10am to 12noon, Saturday 30th October
This event will involve searching for nurdles and bio-beads as well as other micro plastic in the salt marsh riverbank. Fascinating to get up close with this plastic pollution that most people overlook. Meeting where the concrete path meets the beach (20 min walk from car park). Car park charge.
Please email strandlinersevents@gmail.com to register.
Hastings, Rock-a-Nore
Survey
10am to 12 noon, Saturday 13th November.
This will involve clambering on slippery boulders and walking on shingle to investigate areas tricky to reach.
Please email strandlinersevents@gmail.com to book a place as numbers are limited due to access.
Dungeness (Galloways)
Marine Conservation Society Beach Clean & Survey
9am to 1pm, Saturday 11th December
Marine Conservation Society survey. 30 to 45 minute walk on shingle (each way) and a 2/3 hour survey activity.
Please email strandlinersevents@gmail.com to book a place.
Bexhill
Marine Conservation Society Beach Clean & Survey
10am to 12noon, Sunday 12th December
This is Clean Seas Please event for the Marine Conservation Society. Venue to be confirmed, Bexhill.
Please email strandlinersevents@gmail.com to book a place.
If anyone has already registered/booked for any of these events, there’s no need to register.
Radio 4 The Briefing Room
The Briefing Room
Britain’s dirtiest rivers
Very useful background to the current issues of water companies discharging untreated sewage into our waterways and seas.
Past Events
A wonderful group of nurdlers resting after cake at Camber Sands! Part of our Great Nurdle Hunt series of events, looking for nurdles, bio beads and micro plastic. Biobeads can be seen along the strandline and can be mistaken for black organic pieces of flotsam.
Winchelsea Beach and Rother District Councillor Howard Norton was thanked for the generous community grant for survey and safety equipment, enabling volunteers to be safer in their survey efforts to record environmental pollution.
Thanks also goes to the 100 plus volunteers who came and surveyed for marine pollution (a clean up too) supporting the national Great British Beach Clean run by the Marine Conservation Society. We held events at Dungeness, Winchelsea Beach, Pett Level, Rock-a-Nore, Hastings & Galley Hill, Bexhill. The Hastings & Bexhill events were part of the Clean Seas Please project.
Strandliners have also been the recipient of safety and survey equipment from the Marine Conservation Society, enabling surveys to take place in all weathers.
Camber Sands Brand Audit
Weekend evenings in August & September
This summer brought higher numbers of visitors to Camber Sands and the resulting rubbish left is greater than ever. We hope to be able to bring real time data and evidence to the discussion around rubbish left by beach visitors, with the Camber community, parish council and other stakeholders over the winter.
Dungeness (Galloways)
Great British Beach Clean
Saturday 18th September
Wonderful long walk to an area where a more realistic picture of marine pollution can be recorded. No beach users/visitors picking up the evidence!
We do that at the same time as recording.
86% plastic. 325 items weighing 12kg per 100m.
39% – Fishing sourced
24% – Public sourced
13% – Shipping sourced
7% – Sewage related debris
The Clean Earth Show
Azur, St.Leonards-on-Sea
Sunday 19th September
An interesting event that should be happening next year. We delivered our talk, “Adding value to beach cleans and litter picks”. Watch out for another talk soon.
Hastings, Rock-a-Nore
Great British Beach Clean
Friday 24th September
This Clean Seas Please event for the Marine Conservation Society at Rock-a-Nore, Hastings.
21 volunteers joined and found in 100m…
520 pieces of manmade pollution, lost accidentally or deliberately by human intervention!
114 packets & pieces of crisp packets, sweet wrappers, lolly sticks and other small food packets.
63 cigarette stubs. These contain plastic. Even if they didn’t, it is not right that they should be discarded. Their journey is either short – dropped by a smoker on the beach, or long – dropped anywhere and washed by rain into gutters, into drains, into water courses, into rivers, out to sea and back cup onto beach.
Pett Level
Great British Beach Clean
Saturday 25th September
31 volunteers found in 100m…
228 pieces
59% plastic
This is a low percentage of plastic and follows the trend of larger plastic items being removed from the beach by beach visitors/users. Great to remove it, but it does change the data/evidence.
Winchelsea Beach
Great British Beach Clean
Saturday 25th September
30 volunteers joined in. We found, in 100m…
265 pieces
65% plastic
35 pieces of tissue paper the highest recorded item.
Bexhill
Great British Beach Clean
Sunday 26th September
This Clean Seas Please event for the Marine Conservation Society at Galley Hill, Bexhill.
20+ volunteers found, picked up, sorted, identified and recorded in 100m…
295 items
69% plastic
20 bagged dog poo bags was the horrendous highlight.
3 dog (poss 1 fox) poo with ingested plastic. Dog owners beware!!!!
Hastings & Online
Ocean Symposium 2021
Saturday 2nd October
The UNA Climate & Oceans at Hastings Museum. Great to meet up with everyone, from all over Sussex and Kent too! Presentations from Antarctica and the Caribbean as well as new research on the threat of fibre glass particles from stranded boats decaying in the marine environment.
Camber Sands
The Great Nurdle Hunt
Saturday 9th October
A beautiful morning out on the sandy beach. Sieves, rakes, forks, as well as buckets to separate the sand from the floating micro plastic, were used. Dave found the most colourful nurdle seen as yet – bright purple. A group of 20 with amazing eyesight surveyed our usual spot and found few nurdles or bio beads, but then another spot produced many! Full details of the results in the next news sheet.
Free training available
Do you use the sea or visit the beach often?
Sewage related debris training through Clean Seas Please with Strandliners.
How to identify recently discharged plastic items & record in a new data recording process open for all to access.
If interested please email strandlinerscic@gmail.com before end of October.
Becoming a member of Strandliners gives you an exciting opportunity to join with other volunteers doing something about the increasing level of plastic pollution in our environment that harms wildlife. Additionally, by joining you will help raise funds to develop our area of work and the events Strandliners holds, monitoring and recording plastic pollution in our communities.
Benefits also include our quarterly online magazine, The Fulmar, monthly raffle for a seabean and more too!).
We’d love to have you on board! Please click the button below for more information.
Comments about The Fulmar first edition,
“Excellent publication!”
“Thank you for the informative and high quality newsletter”
“A fascinating read!”
“Thank you for the Magazine, it looks fantastic, and it’s easy to read”
As you may know, Strandliners have always focused on “doing” rather than “saying what we are doing”. But to take greater steps creating awareness and delivering opportunities to lobby for change we need to promote our social media sites. So we have a favour to ask.
If anyone uses Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter if you like & follow our sites below it will help us reach more people & communities when we share the next mismanaged waste campaign. The Facebook page is new so has no likes at the moment (we hope it works!).