BEACH Clean up! WSORC volunteer Bobby joined forces with Bay Islands Conservation Association to help them out during their beach cleaning efforts.

It's been a little quiet from us as staff and volunteers at the Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Center have been racing around this last week in a jam-packed ride of conservation efforts, big fundraising events, research projects and more!  In a bid to fill you in on some of the events WSORC has been involved with from the past week, below is Bobby's account of his participation at the Bay Islands Conservation Association's big beach clean on Pumpkin Hill beach.  We are at the start of sea turtle nesting season here in Utila, so in a bid to clear the beach of waste so the female hawksbill sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs are not faced with a barrage of trash, volunteers and the local community and schools went along to Pumpkin Hill beach to clear things up!

Photo credit to Simon Hilbourne

            It took a little while to find the Bay Islands Conservation Association building, but in the end, facing the hills and sun was worth it. Today BICA organized a clean-up on Pumpkin Hill beach, to which volunteers from the Iguana Station and Whale Shark Center (myself), backpackers, and local Utilians responded; first thing in the morning, we donned our new t-shirts, clambered into a couple of trucks, and shipped off to the other side of the island. Hanging onto the tailgate of the second truck, I watched the jungle pass by as we weaved through dirt roads and bounded tree roots and puddles to reach this remote beach. Eventually the scent of the sea caught the breeze and I could loosen my death-grip on the bedrail.

            Trash bags were passed out and we got to work—although volunteers had reached the beach before I stepped onto it, there was still an impressive amount of trash strewn across the sand. Nets, bottles, torn-up flip-flops, and plastic miscellany had become part of the landscape, and our mission was to remove it, clearing the beach for sea turtle nesting season. After an hour or so, I was very happy with our headway, seeing most the garbage was removed from this small piece of coast; my fellow volunteers had done well working around tidal marks, rock outcroppings, and sand patches. Satisfied, I moved down the beach where we had not begun working, and what I saw would have been beautiful had it not been so appalling.

            A broad spectrum of colors and shapes painted the palate of the shore; the relatively small amount of assorted plastic waste I’d seen up to this point was one hundred times multiplied. Greens, blues, reds, yellows, pinks, and purples created an intricate mosaic—a labyrinth of products dismissed by people long ago now finding a place on Utila’s shore. Diving into this mess, a new friend of mine looked back into the field of rubbish, perhaps overwhelmed, and said, “It looks like we’re barely making an impact.”

            Now I couldn’t help but recall an African folktale I had heard a while ago, in which a fire broke out in a forest. The animal inhabitants escaped to safety, but stopped to watch as their home burned. As they sat—defeated, overwhelmed—a tiny hummingbird went to work; he flew down to the stream, took a few drops of water in his beak, and flew back to the forest, dropping the moisture onto the flames. He continued, ignoring the larger animals’ taunts and jokes, animals that with their bigness could have had a much greater impact on the fire. Finally, after hearing “What are you doing hummingbird? You’re much too little to stop the fire” one too many times, he told his fellow animals, “I am doing what I can.”

            I turned to my friend, “But we are making an impact,” and we continued working, a veritable sea of waste before us. Altogether, the beach-clean volunteers collected about forty bags full of trash. Hopefully this will be enough to allow for the turtles to make their nests—we’ll see in the weeks to come—and hopefully the rest of the world will join the efforts of the brave hummingbirds working on Utila.

Thanks Bobby! What a solid effort!  Beach clean ups will be going on throughout the year here on Utila as conservation organisations and the local community stand together to try and tackle the garbage build up along Utila's coastline.  Come get involved & join us for the next big beach clean up on 27th June!