I'm especially looking forward to speaking at the event tonight along side John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, Richard Lochhead MSP, former Environment Minister and Tom Brock, Chief Executive of the Scottish Seabird Centre as they have all been involved with our Beachwatch project either themselves or through their staff and volunteers!
Beachwatch is our national beach cleaning and litter surveying citizen science project which has seen huge increases in numbers taking part over the past couple of years in Scotland thanks to the successful partnership working with organisations like Greenpeace and the Seabird Centre as well as Scottish Parliament with Mr Lochead being one of many MSP beach cleaners, although I have to admit I think he is definitely the longest running MSP beach cleaner as I remember meeting him at a Great British Beach Clean event run by another one of our partners WDC at Speybay nearly 10 years ago!
More recently I have been out on the beach with both Greenpeace staff and volunteers training them up in our Beachwatch project. The Edinburgh Greenpeace group has officially adopted a stretch of local coastline through Beachwatch with some funding from Edinburgh City Council and have started collecting that all important beach litter data for MCS. The data that is collected by our thousands of volunteers is essential for our pollution campaigns such as a current work around Deposit Return Systems, consultation responses, data sharing agreements with water companies and policy makers as well as the production of an annual report.
It was therefore fantastic to hear about the new Scottish Expedition that Greenpeace were embarking on and how the MCS Beachwatch project could be involved not just in Edinburgh, but all around the Scottish Coast!
The Beluga II will be taking scientists and campaigners aboard, including MCS staff hopefully (very excited about this!), and working with organisations like MCS across Scotland to tour our iconic coastline and document how its globally important marine life is being impacted by ocean plastic pollution, from the puffins and gannets of Bass Rock, to the basking sharks of Gunna Sound in the Hebrides.
Throughout the expedition, Greenpeace will be sampling wildlife feeding waters for microplastics, gathering data to further scientific research, documenting plastic pollution on remote beaches and highlighting the effects of ocean plastic on some of the UK’s most precious wildlife.
It was around their interest in documenting plastic pollution that the Beluga II team got in touch as they had heard about Beachwatch and how some of their volunteers had already been involved.
So in a couple of hours, ahead of the launch tonight I will be out on a beach in Edinburgh with the Beluga II teams training them in how to survey beach litter using the Beachwatch survey forms. This will mean that they will be able to add data to the project from beaches that have never been surveyed before as they will be able to reach those remote and hard to get to spots around our coastline during the expedition. I'm very intrigued to see the results!
Scientists estimate that 90% of seabirds now have plastic in their stomachs and plastic pollution has been observed in the farthest corners of the world’s oceans, from Pacific islands to Arctic ice. It is therefore so important that we have more volunteers, groups and organisations like Greenpeace that can gather data and help contribute to one database that we can then all draw on for fighting the rising tide of marine litter. Thank you to all of you who already take part in Beachwatch and if you haven't had the chance to yet then please do get in touch!
We will also be joined by the Greenpeace team on Mull where I'll be running a beach clean with some local schools who have been beach cleaning for a long time and are excited to tell their story to Greenpeace and help highlight their messages about beach litter from their island.
It's going to be a busy few months but I'm extremely excited to be involved. Do keep an eye out for the Beluga II, and we look forward to seeing them both tonight and on Mull as well as the data they will be collecting.
If you have a beach clean planned over the next two months or are planning on taking part in the MCS Plastic Challenge do let us know and join the conversation online at @mcsuk.
MCS Scotland Conservation Officer Catherine Gemmell has been working at MCS for two years from our Edinburgh Office increasing engagement in our Beachwatch project as well as promoting our pollution campaigns and supporting policy work.
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