With huge swells and strong southerly winds lashing the coast throughout the week, now is the time to hit the high tide line of the region’s south-facing beaches and pick up debris that has washed ashore.
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It is estimated there is more than 18,000 pieces of plastic in each square kilometre of ocean and more than eight million tonnes of debris enters the world's oceans each year.
The Australian Marine Debris Initiative has been established by environmental group Tangaroa Blue to create a network of volunteers and organisations to help reduce marine debris.
The AMDI encourages people who conduct marine debris cleanups to collect data on what they pick up at their local beach.
This information can them be loaded into the AMDI database, which builds a picture of how and where marine debris affects coastlines on a national scale.
Coastal clean ups have been underway in the Bega Valley for the last 10 years, with Bega Valley Shire Council partnering with Far South Coast Landcare, National Parks and Wildlife Service, South East Local Land Services, Local Aboriginal Land Councils, and Coastal Weeds Project to control unwanted weeds and rubbish.
Twice a year members of LALCs conduct sweeps of the coastline between Bermagui and Eden.
In April last year, members of Merrimans LALC tallied garbage they had collected from two beaches in Mimosa Rocks National Park and a second tally from Wallaga Beach North
The highest counts for all three beaches were for foam pieces (210), pieces of hard plastic (99), soft plastic pieces (81), plastic drink bottles (47), bottle tops (33) and balloon remnants (12), indicating plastic pollution is a real threat to the local marine environment.
Council also banned the release of balloons in March last year, after the evidence of them polluting marine environments became clear through the AMDI database.
“By using Tangaroa Blue’s Australian Marine Debris Initiative database, I informed the council meeting that in my 28 reports over three years, 260 balloons – remnant, whole or burst – were collected from just one kilometre section of beach,” Bermagui spokesperson for No Balloon Release Australia Karen Joynes said at the time.
Council said that many locals and holiday makers have taken it upon themselves to pick up rubbish they find in their travels around the Bega Valley, but the most effective way to reduce marine debris is preventing it from entering the marine environment in the first place.