May was a busy month for us, with the weekend of 9-11 May turning out to be the biggest beach cleaning event we have ever organised on the island – the Bracadale Beach Blitz! With the help of many volunteers and partner organisations, and especially the Scottish Coastal Clean Up project and their boat, the Curlew, we removed at least five tonnes of litter from seven of the beaches around Loch Bracadale. The weather was still too rough to use the boat on the 10th, so we concentrated on cleaning as much as we could over the first two days, and collecting it all up to two skips on the Sunday. Sadly the weather also prevented us being able to access the island beaches, so these remain a further exercise under better conditions in the future.
One of the best things about this exercise was that we were also able to send a significant amount of hard plastic and netting away for recycling – many thanks to Neil Hembrow of the Ocean Recovery Project of Keep Britain Tidy for this and Vicki Last from the Scottish Islands Federation for coordinating the uplift. Representatives of the recycling company, MY Group, also came to see first-hand where we recover this material from. As previously, we also have to thank The Highland Council for providing us with skips, and to MOWI for access to their skip at Portnalong, as well as help with handling the boat there, and the removal of a significant amount of feed pipe from Ose Point.
On the Friday afternoon we also held a drop in event at the former Struan School, where Rebecca from Shore to Floor displayed and demonstrated mat making from recovered rope, and SMASS displayed marine plastic recovered from dead cetaceans, amongst other things. Thanks also to D J Morrison for boat support on the Sunday, and James MacQueen (Building Contractors) for builders’ bags – essential to move this amount of debris!
Thanks also to the guys at Eynort for removing another 940kgs of litter on 3rd May, and contributing more towards the recycling collection, and Skye Tidy Tidelines for adding a whopping 1.72 tonnes to our total debris removed to date for the year! This bring the amount removed so far this year to nearly 11 tonnes!
We are also delighted to announce that as of 7 May 2025, Skye Beach Cleans has become a registered charity (a SCIO, to be precise), No. SC054213. Many thanks to Jo from SLCVO for helping us with the application! Initially registered with four Trustees – Peggy Semler (Ullinish), Katy Lawrence (Dunvegan), Emma Armstrong (Camas Cross) and Siobhan Barker (Balmacara) – we have now been joined by Rob Jopling (Caroy) and Emily Johns (Inverness). We have now established a bank account and plan to consolidate existing funds, and will now be eligible to apply for further funds to, for example, establish a recycling centre for marine litter, support other community groups in the area, and ultimately fund a dedicated beach cleaning boat and associated Ranger position for Skye & Lochalsh. Don’t forget that if you would like to get more directly involved with our activities, we’d love to hear from you!
We are currently in the process of reconstructing our website, with new features, and merchandise in the pipeline. We hope to have this all up and running in the next month or so!
July sees the return of Dr Tom Stanton and his 50 years of litter on Skye project team for a third season. As well as carrying out surveying and beach cleaning at various places on Skye, there will be an Open Afternoon event at An Crùbh on Sunday 27 July – “Life’s a Beach” – organised by Sleat Nature Group, bringing together lots of the organisations involved in beach cleaning and marine litter in our area. So please put this date in your diary, and we will look forward to seeing you there!
As well as this, Tom’s group will be carrying out a clean at Camasunary on Thursday 25 July, in conjunction with the John Muir Trust – all welcome to join this, meeting at the Kilmarie car park for 1000 hrs. They will also be surveying and cleaning at Ullinish again, and as always, help with the clean would be much appreciated – parking is limited here, so please let us know if you are planning to come and we can advise you accordingly (skye.beachcleans@gmail.com or via Facebook).
We are also planning a clean at Caroy and possibly Struan Causeway area – dates TBA. If there are any other really bad areas that need a clean, please get in touch as above!