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Staff and volunteers from local companies 7Seasrope and White Shark Diving Company, and learners from the Marine Science Club at Gansbaai Academia got together on Monday afternoon to start cleaning up Gansbaai harbour.
With 19 volunteers in total, they spanned an area approximately 100m² of the old harbour and picked up 160kg of trash in just over an hour.
The main items picked up were rope, glass and of course plastic.
The rope appears to be from trawl nets broken up into thousands of little pieces, which cover the ground like a blanket in some areas.
The glass is mainly beer bottles and broken beer bottles where people have carelessly disposed of their trash.
The plastic tends to be bottles and broken up micro plastics and it is difficult to determine what they are specifically from.
Trash in harbours can often accumulate as harbours are so frequently used and don’t always provide the disposal sites needed.
Debris can also accumulate from the ocean as well as from shore. Whilst Gansbaai harbour is not the most trash-infested harbour in the world, there is still endless amounts of garbage to be cleaned up.
Marine debris and garbage in our oceans is the biggest problem facing our oceans today.
It has been predicted that if we continue the way we are, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.
As our town is incredibly dependent on the ocean, we need to work together to keep our coastlines and waters clean as much as possible, to help conserve our marine ecosystems and wildlife without which we would be lost.
7Seasrope would like to thank the Marine Science Club Learners from Gansbaai Academia for their effort and enthusiasm, as well as the volunteers from White Shark Diving Company. “Working with a number of people allows us to make a much bigger impact and achieve so much more,” says André Roux and Jennifer Tomuschat founders of 7Seasrope.
7Seasrope will be returning to Gansbaai Harbour over the next few weeks to make an effort to clean up the entire harbour.
If you want to get involved or organise your own clean-up, get in touch with 7seasrope@gmail.com.
7Seasrope is an initiative developed in the area by local people working in the white shark cage diving industry to raise awareness around the biggest problem facing our oceans today - marine debris.
