Divers and kayakers have teamed up to remove almost 100kg (220lbs) of litter from “little pirate coves, caves and tunnels” along the Aberdeenshire coastline.
The Stonehaven Canoe Club joined forces with the Deeside Sub Aqua Club as part of this year’s Great British Beach Clean, organised by the Marine Conservation Society.
Over one day, the 15-strong team of water sports enthusiasts took to the chilly waters south of Stonehaven to carefully navigate five coves and haul out all manner of manmade items from the marine ecosystem.
The rubbish included lots of plastic, fishing gear, and even two pairs of pants.
Canoe club was ‘well up for it’
Diver Marja van den Houten said the nature of the coves they targeted makes them very difficult for litter-pickers to tackle on foot.
She said: “The coves are really hard to access because the cliffs are so steep, so even if people piled up the stuff they collected, it would be really hard to pick it up, you’d need to walk it up the cliffs, which is near impossible.
“So that’s where we as a dive club wanted to get involved with this community which we are guests in, because we do use the harbour a lot, and give a little back.
“We thought why don’t we use the boat, and pick up the stuff, and then kayakers and paddlers can get in closer, because the coves are quite tricky with a lot of rocks.
“That’s when I got in touch with the Stonehaven Canoe Club, and they were well up for it.”
After all the rubbish was hauled out of the sea and out from under rocky beaches in the coves, Aberdeenshire Council uplifted it all, which Marja said was “just great”, because the crew had an “absolutely knackering day out on the water”.
Marja continued: “The atmosphere was just brilliant, people were just so motivated.
“We got to see these little pirate coves, and caves, and tunnels, it’s absolutely amazing and so beautiful.”
Where did they go on the litter-picking adventure?
The team scoured the five coves, totalling around 1km (0.6) miles of coastline on September 25.
They went to Strathlethan Bay, just south of Stonehaven Harbour, and Castle Haven and Old Hall bays, which lie to the north and south of Dunottar Castle respectively.
Finally, they went to Tremuda and Thornyhive Bay, near RSPB Fowlsheugh.
To help provide the Marine Conservation Society with useful data, they selected one 200m (656ft) stretch to survey, and counted up all the different kinds of litter discovered.
On that stretch, 565 items were removed, and 460 of them were plastic or polystyrene.
A total of 99kg of litter was removed, with 36kg from the survey beach alone — and one fishing creel found in good condition has been “returned for active duty” by Stonehaven’s fishing community.
Marja said the whole experience provided “quite a few eye-openers” for the team.
She continued: “We looked at the beach and thought, well, we won’t find anything here, but ended up finding kilos of stuff.
“There were a lot of creel-related ropes and also the plastics that coat the metal parts of the creels.
“There was a little bit of picnic litter, I think you can tell that people are definitely littering less.
“These beaches are heavy pebble beaches, so they grind up the big bits of plastic into smaller bits, which is quite a big problem for seabirds because it makes them easier to digest it.”
After seeing the massive bags full of litter piled up at Stonehaven Harbour, Marja said the two groups are keen for more collaboration and clean-ups in the future.
“We’re definitely going to do more together, this was a great experience,” she added.
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