Tackling ghost fishing
A group of local volunteers recently trekked a section of the Southern Cape coastline for the second year in a row, primarily to survey the extent of fishing debris and plastic pollution in the area.
The Strandloper Project (meaning “beach walker”) was birthed in 2018 by local scientist and trail expert Mark Dixon after visiting guests commented on the amount of snagged recreational fishing tackle on the reef at Gericke’s Point.
“I decided to clean up, and 16 people joined in. An incredible amount was cleaned up, and as a scientist, I decided to quantify it. We had 64 sinkers over 100m. A month later, we collected 67 sinkers from the same transect,” he said.
This raised concerns over “ghost-fishing” in the area, a term relating to derelict fishing gear that “continues to fish” after being left behind by its user.
Over the next 18 months, they noticed damage to the reef in high-cast zones and evidence of lead poisoning and avian entanglements. “This inspired the concept of the expedition to get a comparison along the coastline,” Dixon explained. And so, the first expedition was held from Blombos to Wilderness, with 210km of hiking over 11 days.
Photo gallery: Beachcombers clean the beach in support of Strandloper Project
“We use a collection of the ‘dirty dozen’ survey method (every 5km), incidental-sightings method and a plastic-bottle survey (every 2km). All data is captured on our smartphones using Cybertracker.” Incidental sightings relate to anything of interest along the route, Dixon explained.
Microplastics from a 10m x 2m “dirty-dozen” transect east of Kleinkrans. Research from both the 2019 and 2020 expeditions indicate that this is the densest accumulation of washed-up plastic in 400km of coastline. Photo: Mark Dixon
This year, the core team of six embarked in Nature’s Valley on 2 October and ended in Wilderness on 13 October, covering 156km of the coastline and conducting 1 620 incidental sightings, 33 dirty-dozen surveys, and 35 plastic-bottle surveys.
“The data we collected … confirmed one of the core plastic pollutants in the Garden Route – nurdles,” said Dixon, who added they found densities of up to 1 587 nurdles (small plastic pellets) per 35cm x 35cm quadrant in areas of extreme deposits, and averages of 550 nurdles per 20m² elsewhere.
Collecting and quantifying data wasn’t their only challenge, however. “The shoreline between Nature’s Valley and Keurbooms and then between Robberg and Noetzie posed a number of geological barriers which had to be attempted at low tide,” Dixon said.
For the team, each day yielded a highlight, though for Dixon the “sheer beauty” of the landscape and knowing that very few people have hiked their route in one go, stands out.
Pam Booth, Lisa Leslie, Melinda Morkel and Chris Leggatt navigate rocks along the way. Photo: Mark Dixon
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Source: Knysna Plett Herald News