Marine science students from the Dunwich State School & Secondary Department have begun a marine litter data collection campaign to help raise public awareness of the problem.
The students were concerned about the increasing amount of litter occurring on the North Stradbroke Island beaches, and its impacts on wildlife.
The impetus for the project came from visiting The University of Queensland’s Moreton Bay Research Station.
Station Education Officer Dr Kathy Townsend gave the students a slide show presentation on the Station`s turtle rehabilitation program. The presentation included the juvenile turtle that had recently washed up with over 40 individual pieces of rubbish found in its gut.
“The students were deeply affected by the photos of the amount of rubbish that was found in this small turtle," science teacher Jan Connolly said.
“It was from Dr Kathy’s initial talk that the students decided to do an in-depth project on the subject.”
On return to the classroom the students then started doing research in the library and on the web. The research proved to be an eye-opener to the students.
“They discovered that it is estimated that over 10 million tonnes of rubbish is dumped from ships alone per year,” Ms Connolly said.
“This figure does not even include the rubbish that would be washed out to sea from land based sources! The students were completely blown away.”
From there the students decided that they needed to not only collect data on the amount of rubbish found washed up on Stradbroke Islands beaches but to also start a public awareness campaign.
Their first survey was done on Main Beach, which they considered to be a clean beach. The goal was to walk 30 minutes one way and then return back picking up the rubbish. Within ten minutes they had found more rubbish than 12 students could comfortably carry. To help cart this formidable load, they made rubbish sleighs out of everything from old strips of rubber to disused plastic bins to pull it up the beach to the nearest rubbish bins.
“We ended up collecting over four wheelie bins worth of rubbish, and we thought this was a clean beach,” the students said.
After this initial survey Ms Connolly approached Dr Townsend to see if she would be interested in helping out with the public awareness campaign. The datasheet the students had created was placed on the Moreton Bay Research Station web page and circulated to the Friends of MBRS network.
“The response has been incredible,” Dr Townsend said.
“Many of the locals already do daily beach walks, collecting rubbish as they go. They are excited about this project because there is now an added purpose to this daily activity.
“By the next day we were getting data sheets returned to us,” Ms Connolly said.
“This has turned out to be a really fantastic joint project between Dunwich State School & Secondary Department and The University of Queensland.”
Are you visiting North Stradbroke Island and would like to help the Dunwich students? You can download the data sheet from the Moreton Bay Research Station web site on www.marine.uq.edu.au/mbrs . Please remember to return the rubbish survey form only and dispose of any rubbish found in the nearest bins.
Media: Further information, Dr Kathy Townsend on (07) 3409 9058 or kathy.townsend@uq.edu.au
Jan Connolly on (07) 3409 6344 or activejan@bigpond.com
High res photos of the students collecting rubbish available on request: Photo credits Jan Connolly
.jpg)
