We spent the hottest part of yesterday under the hot sun on the beach of San Francisco – a village north of Tortuguero in northeastern Costa Rica. I’d like to say we were tanning and surfing but we weren’t. We were picking up beach debris in a plot 25 m wide and about 100 m wide. It was the final stage in a study that encompassed a swath 100 m wide and begun a week ago. Our job was to gather all the human-generated garbage that was over 2.5 cm (1 in.) long. In one month this exercise will be repeated so that the researchers can see how much of it is replaced.

Plastic is a HUGE worldwide problem, both on land and in the sea. It is estimated that over 6 M metric tonnes of debris enter the sea every year; 80% of it originates on the land and blows or is washed into the ocean. Canadian beaches are “relatively” litter free. The degree and scope of the program comes home to you in places like coastal Costa Rica, away from the resorts. The beaches in the Tortuguero area are a prime example: plastic debris is everywhere and in large amounts.

To give you an idea, here’s a list of what I found when separating a bag of debris that was collected on the surface in just a very small part of the beach/study area:
Food wrappers – 33
Beverage bottles – 17
Bottle or container caps – 107
Cigarettes – 1
Plastic/nylon rope pieces 30 cm – 1
Cups – 3
Plastic utensils – 12
Straws/lollipop sticks – 43
Personal care products (eg, comb, toothbrush) – 2
Plastic toys – 5
Plastic pieces >2.5 cm – 717
Plastic pieces Rubber band – 1
Planed wood – 2
Shoe/shoe pieces – 5
Plastic clothes pins – 7
Foam/sponge pieces – 8
Umbrella handle – 1
Pull tabs (from juice tetrapaks) – 5
Syringe – 1
Mesh bag – 1

The study does NOT include plastic debris 1000m) from the northern part of the Labrador Sea.) But it’s the plastic floating in the sea that presents a huge problem: 111 out of 312 marine species of birds have been shown to have ingested plastic debris. The impact of this ingestion is yet to be clearly ascertained but the initial thinking is very negative. You can find Google pictures of skeletal juvenile seabirds with a pile of plastic where their innards used to be. It has been sow that polyethylene accumulates more organic contaminants than other plastics and that PCB’s can transfer from plastic to shearwater chicks.

Today I spent the afternoon in the shade with fellow volunteers sorting some of the (15+) bags we gathered yesterday. There’s a lot of plastic. But the really depressing part of this story is that this morning I went by the area that we cleared yesterday – I was doing a shorebird count. Sadly, a good-sized crop of new plastic had come in on the intervening tides. We’ll know the rate of this replenishment in a month’s time.

Geoff sorting debris into “categories”.

Sorting beach debris

The beach “looks” pristine but a closer look reveals a sick environment.

An example of “small” pieces of plastic….still huge in comparison to micro-plastic debris.

Rick