Vancouver Island’s spectacular northwest coast lies wreathed in fog and whipped by winds blowing straight from Japan. On days like this, it has an ethereal feel. But look closer, and it’s all too real: plastic marine debris is collecting on every shore. We need your help to restore this amazing place.
For the past two years, you’ve been there to help us remove dangerous plastics – from rope and nets to tonnes of water bottles and industrial plastics – that choke every little nook and cranny of the west coast’s rocky shoreline. Each time we mount an expedition to these remote regions, we try to figure out how we can recover more debris with less expense.
This year, we brought together the First Nations, municipalities and other non-profits working on Vancouver Island and proposed to pool resources in a project that we’ve dubbed “The GarBarge”: a tug-and-barge operation that will collect all of the marine debris we can gather, heli-lifting it from remote beaches all along Vancouver Island’s west coast.
What we’ve got planned is the biggest marine debris recovery operation Canada has ever seen. The GarBarge is expected to recover 30-40 tonnes of debris.
Hundreds of volunteer hours go into marine debris recovery each summer on Vancouver Island’s west coast, where debris escaping the North Pacific Gyre follows the currents to our shores. Transporting people and gear into these remote locations – and getting the debris out at the end – is a costly business, however.
Would you help us, please?
Thanks to your support and a generous gift from the Government of Japan and its people, Living Oceans has been able to remove over 8 tonnes of dangerous debris from important sea bird and otter habitat. (2013-2015)
This year, all the debris we collect will be left in special lift bags until the end of the season, when we’ll return with a helicopter to lift them to a 200′ barge donated by Seaspan. We will pick up caches of debris from Cape Scott all the way down the coast – likely over a hundred pickup sites. We will need to hire helicopters over several days, at a cost of over $1100 per hour. Can you help us with that cost? We’re presently about $50,000 short of our budget.
Our plan is to have the barge carry the whole load to Steveston Harbour for sorting and transportation to plastics recyclers in Metro Vancouver. This way, we’ll be able to get most of the plastics repurposed, rather than landfilled. Steveston Harbour Authority gtes a big shout-out for providing the dock space and facilities to ensure our volunteers can sort the material.
Flying over the Cape Scott area last year, even after we’d removed five tonnes of debris, we were chastened to see the places we hadn’t been able to get to choked with plastic. If we don’t get it out, it will be refloated on the tides and end up entangling marine mammals, or being groung down into bite-sized pieces on the beaches. We can’t let that happen. Please join us today in restoring this rich and diverse habitat.
For more information on this expedition, and our other current campaigns, click here to see our newsletter. And for more information on how to make a donation, please click here
With sincere thanks,
Karen