The official blog of BlueTurtle.com
Beach Plastic Pollution
Styrofoam glazed Mile Rock Beach in San Francisco
Feb 27th
Today my friend and I went for a walk down to Mile Rock Beach at Land’s End in San Francisco and discovered that Styrofoam is pretty much part of the landscape now. Wherever I looked I saw Styrofoam tiny pieces stuck in between and under the rocks, in the sand and under various bushes and branches that are found on the beach. I have visually examined couple of areas and found that there were at list 2-3 visible pieces for every square inch. I only found few larger pieces and that is because Styrofoam is very easily broken down by the elements. I wonder how much of it is around that we can’t even see with our naked eye and where are we heading with all this?
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- Golden Gate Bridge
Ecological State of Plastic Montenegro
Feb 20th
Montenegro during January 2010 will definitely be remembered by incredible floods that have washed away incredible amounts of garbage, mostly plastic, and covered thousands of acres of cost lines of Skadar Lake, River Bojana and the Adriatic. This single event has caused more damage to the environment than any other event in the history of that country. The photos you are looking at are from the Bay of Kotor, one of main tourist destinations.
Energizer AA Alkaline Battery Sunbathing on Bermuda
Jan 29th
My last stop before heading down to the airport was St. Catherine’s Beach, also known as Gates Beach. It was refreshing seeing it clean even though I knew that the reason behind it was due to the fact that it was just recently cleaned. There were still few remnants of the reality, a ghost net that came from who knows where and a lone AA Energizer Alkaline Battery who was unfortunately not informed about the side effects caused by direct sunlight exposure. Well, in a few hours I will be on a plane to New York. Sad to leave so early but I will be back for sure 
Bermuda’s beautiful trash of Tobacco Bay
Jan 29th
Today on my last day in Paradise, while riding a scooter I rented and successfully crashed yesterday, I came across this tiny, incredibly beautiful beach on Saint George’s Island called Tobacco Bay. I just had to stop at the top of the hill to snap few photos before heading down for a close up experience. You may say that based on my previous beach trash discoveries I should have totally expected to find trash on this beach as well, but I didn’t! For some reason I was not thinking about trash at all, maybe I am sick and tired of it? So once I came down to the beach I was in for a shock! Such a beautiful bay but almost entirely covered with trash. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I am glad this beach was not cleaned up and I was able to document it the way it is. Beach clean ups are great and absolutely necessary but in a way they are not much different from swiping it under the rug. So thanks to the beach cleanups most people never get to see the extent of the plastic pollution problem. By the way, I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t do beach cleanups, of course
Maarten to build a giant plastic reef
Jan 26th
One of our new crew members is an artist from Netherlands, Maarten Vanden Eynde. He is using plastic found on beaches around the world to build a gigantic plastic reef sculpture to raise awareness about this problem. So today I took Marteen, his girlfriend Marjolijn Dijkman and my friend Michael Atallah to that trash beach we found few days ago in Warwick Parish to collect as much plastic as possible for his sculpture.
Bermuda’s beautiful bays versus plastic – Part 2
Jan 23rd
Islands of Bermuda are located right on the edge of The North Atlantic Gyre which obviously is a major contributing factor to the amount of trash found on its beaches. What is interesting is that many Bermudians are not aware of this problem at all. Most people will tell you that the reason their beaches are so clean is because they have many organizations on the island that do beach clean ups. It is true, many organizations such as Greenrock.org and Keep Bermuda Beautiful doing a lot of work to keep Bermuda as clean as possible. I don’t even want to imagine how it would all look without these companies doing their work. But what people don’t know is that some things just cannot be cleaned up.
Nonsuch Island
Jan 19th
Our friends from BIOS invited us on board of Spirit of Bermuda, a purpose-built sail training vessel based on civilian Bermudian-type schooners built in Bermuda by blacks and whites between 1810 and 1840. In 2009 Spirit participated in TALL SHIPS®ATLANTIC CHALLENGE. It was pretty impressive standing on its deck, it felt like going back in time.
Today on board were also group of kids from a local public school to whom Marcus and Anna gave a short presentation about the problem of disposable plastic and its impact on marine life. We went back to BIOS’s boat POLARIS and headed out to the Nonsuch Island for some snorkeling. I was looking forward to seeing this incredible island that has been under restoration since 1962 and is a living museum of the indigenous flora and fauna which dominated Bermuda before human settlement in 1612. Even though the island does not have any inhabitants I knew that we are going to encounter some level of pollution, the question was just how much. We anchored in a small cove with magical torques crystal clear water and a beach that would make you jealous. We had such a good time snorkeling and exploring the island. From a distance everything appeared to be fine but just like everywhere else on Bermuda plastic was part of the landscape. Even while snorkeling, small plastic pieces, mostly wrappings and bags could be seen everywhere. I took some dozen of videos and then unfortunately erased them all by mistake while transferring to my computer. Oh well, lessons learned…..
Bermuda beach cleanup
Jan 17th
Today we participated in two beach cleanups organized by Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB) with the help of volunteers from Marsh, IAS and Guy Carpenter.
These beaches must be some of the most beautiful in the world, and at first look everything appears OK. Unfortunately, that statement is very far from the truth. I really did not expect to see this level of plastic pollution all the way out here in the middle of Atlantic. Honestly, in some areas it appears as if the sand is made out of plastic! The question for which I would like an answer is: what is the percentage of plastic in the sand of Bermuda beaches? This is nothing short of a catastrophe! Do we realize that we are already at the point where we will never be able to go on a clean beach like our parents did just few years ago?
In a few days we are going on a snorkeling trip at the Nonesuch Island. It does not have any inhabitants so I wonder what we are going to find on its beaches.
Trip to the Hassel Island
Jan 6th
The day was perfect, we dropped our dingy in to the water and headed out to a secluded beach on the south side of Hassel Island. I was really looking forward to it because I have never visited this place before and I wanted to see what kind of pollution we are going to encounter there. Of course, I was hoping for a clean beach so we can relax and enjoy the beauty of it all, but we did find the trash, of course plastic was everywhere! How sad, take a look at these photos.
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- There is our beach …. what do you think, we are going to find plastic or not?
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- Beauty or the beast?
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- Well, at list they know how to enjoy this beauty!
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- There we go, plastic caps and some Styrofoam piece that no one is missing.
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- Look what we got here, KFC cup together with his buddies!
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- Plastic bottles in their natural habitat! I wonder if it’s a mating season?
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- Nice, a sea urchin, yes he suppose to be here…
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- Just another plastic piece with a Coke bottle and a piece of Styrofoam
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- This island seam to be collecting almost exclusively plastic bottles
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- It might be a good thing we can easily identify those Coke bottles
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- Going back a little disappointed but excited after a long overdue swim in the tropics :)
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- Going back a little disappointed but excited after a long overdue swim in the tropics :)
