Celebrating World Oceans Day

Hello from Hirta! Last week marked Volunteers’ Week and, in preparation to celebrate World Oceans Day, a beach clean seemed like the perfect activity for volunteers from Work Party 2 – one of our working groups here on St Kilda.

Since 2006 we’ve held an annual beach clean on St Kilda, the results from which feed into the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) national database. Last year the MCS found an average of 600 pieces of litter per 100 metres of beach. Even out here on remote St Kilda we aren’t immune to the problem, as litter from far and wide finds its way into Village Bay and becomes wedged in the rocks of the boulder beach.

After several days of challenging weather, on Tuesday we set off – bin bags in hand – to clear as much as we could find.

Of the 41.2kg we removed this year, most of the 622 items were small, with 147 pieces of expanding foam insulation being the most prolific: a relic still appearing 11 years after the Spinningdale trawler grounded in the bay.

Next up, we had 114 pieces of rope, which we were delighted to remove from the marine environment – even a small piece of rope can be fatal to wildlife. With nearly 1 million seabirds on St Kilda, this poses a real risk and unfortunately each year we see incidents of seabirds tangled in fishing gear.

Later in the day I paid a visit to our Carn Mor puffins, barely a mile from the beach, and came across a puffin carrying a small piece of rope back to the colony. Either it had heard we were cleaning up and wanted to help or, more likely, this plastic rope will be adorning the puffin’s burrow this season. We can only hope that a puffling won’t get wound up in it – a stark reminder of why we clean the beach!

A huge thank you to Work Party 2 for their enthusiasm and help to keep St Kilda clean. On this World Oceans Day, we can look out across the bay to Dùn knowing that our seabirds are that bit safer thanks to their hard work.