by Dan Milner
Under cloudy but thankfully rain-less skies, Sunday 28 July saw a swarm of litter-pickers descend on Ostaig beach, Sleat, for a day of beach cleaning as part of the 50 Years of Litter on Skye project led by Dr Tom Stanton of Loughborough University.
Principally aimed at removing litter flotsam and jetsam, the beach clean day also served to continue the marine litter survey work of Dr Stanton’s team, and within minutes of arrival, 10mx10m quadrants had been marked in order to conduct transects of the beach.
Designating quadrants allows the team to qualify and quantify the litter found and so model the extent of litter affecting many of Skye’s beaches such as Ostaig as well as using GPS locations to map the changes in litter extent and composition in the same quadrants in future surveys.
The team logged an alarming 3,200 pieces of litter found in the eight quadrants, made up of anything and everything from rope and bottle tops to food wrappers and shotgun cartridges, with small pieces of plastic, net clippings and creel dipping remnants being the most abundant.
By the end of the day the volunteers had bagged and removed a whopping four boat loads of litter from all across the beach, taking it away to be removed by the council.
Members of the Sleat Nature Group will be taking on the regular Ostaig survey to further feed data to Tom’s team going forward.
(Photos by Dan Milner)