As the team dis­em­barked our ves­sel along the Cha­cachacare shore­line with gloves and bags in hand, there was a strange si­lence. With shock­ing ex­pres­sions on our faces, all eyes were fix­at­ed on the mounds of garbage plas­tered on the sand. This once pris­tine beach now re­sem­bled a land­fill. One al­most felt like giv­ing up be­fore the cleanup had even be­gun–it seemed to be an in­sur­mount­able task.On Sep­tem­ber 21, 2013, the EMA em­barked on its ninth an­nu­al beach clean-up ex­er­cise at Cha­cachacare Is­land as part of the In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Cleanup (ICC). The ICC has been con­duct­ed for 27 years and is the world's largest co-or­di­nat­ed vol­un­teer ef­fort to­wards build­ing aware­ness of coastal lit­ter­ing. It is es­sen­tial­ly a da­ta-col­lec­tion ex­er­cise which seeks to trace the sources of coastal de­bris; the da­ta will be used to guide en­vi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion and pub­lic aware­ness ini­tia­tives. Ocean Con­ser­van­cy com­piles and analy­ses the da­ta each year, and pub­lish­es the world's on­ly item-by-item, lo­ca­tion-by-lo­ca­tion snap­shot of ma­rine de­bris in an an­nu­al re­port. In 2013, a to­tal of 648,015 vol­un­teers col­lect­ed 12,329,332 pounds of de­bris at beach­es across the world span­ning a dis­tance of 121,914 miles (Ocean Con­ser­van­cy, 2014).

Cha­cachacare is a nest­ing ground for sea tur­tles such as the Green, Hawks­bill, Log­ger­head and Olive Ri­d­ley species which were re­cent­ly des­ig­nat­ed by the EMA as an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-sen­si­tive species.Beach-go­ers who fre­quent this site have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the un­for­tu­nate and un­prece­dent­ed ac­cu­mu­la­tion of de­bris, while the high tide ush­ers wave af­ter wave of garbage from the main­land (Trinidad). This mass of de­bris not on­ly be­comes an eye­sore, but al­so neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts on the sur­vival of ma­rine an­i­mals, in­clud­ing these sea tur­tles and their vul­ner­a­ble hatch­lings.Our team of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 vol­un­teers were there­fore chal­lenged to clean a por­tion of this is­land's lit­tered shore­lines. We dis­cov­ered filled bags of garbage left be­hind by beach-go­ers, used iron pots, fish­ing gear, cig­a­rette lighters, per­son­al-care items, hun­dreds of sty­ro­foam con­tain­ers and plas­tic uten­sils, and of course, thou­sands of bev­er­age con­tain­ers (glass, plas­tic and alu­mini­um). Af­ter on­ly one-and-a-half hours, our op­er­a­tions came to a halt. All 130 bags were burst­ing at the seams with garbage, and now there was the lo­gis­ti­cal night­mare of trans­port­ing these bags back to shore. The com­bined weight of these bags was an as­tound­ing 1,412 pounds. One can on­ly imag­ine how much de­bris would have been col­lect­ed over a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

There is a dis­turb­ing vol­ume of de­bris col­lect­ed along our shore­lines for a small coun­try of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion cit­i­zens. Da­ta from the ICC for T&T re­vealed that 34,228.8 pounds of garbage was col­lect­ed in 2011, the high­est fig­ure since plas­tic and pa­per bags were added to the da­ta col­lec­tion list in 2008. The most no­to­ri­ous ma­rine pol­lu­tant re­mains the plas­tic bot­tle, with 929,000 col­lect­ed at the ICC events from 2002-2012. Food wrap­pers and con­tain­ers fol­low close­ly be­hind, with 622,299 pieces col­lect­ed over the same pe­ri­od.Lit­ter­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly along our shore­lines and rivers, has re­gret­tably be­come part of our cul­ture. There may be sev­er­al the­o­ries to ex­plain this be­hav­iour–an ab­sence of dis­pos­al bins, in­ad­e­quate en­force­ment of an­ti-lit­ter laws, or a gen­er­al non­cha­lant at­ti­tude to­wards the en­vi­ron­ment. What­ev­er the rea­son, our ma­rine ecosys­tems suf­fer the con­se­quences of our ill-in­formed choic­es. An ur­gent change in at­ti­tude is re­quired to ad­dress this prob­lem, a change that starts with each cit­i­zen.

While dri­ving along the na­tion's roads, many cit­i­zens still toss bot­tles and food wrap­pers out the win­dows. At the beach­es and rivers, "cook out" limes are usu­al­ly en­joy­able for fam­i­lies and friends, but detri­men­tal to ma­rine an­i­mals that are left to sur­vive among the waste. Some an­i­mals in­ad­ver­tent­ly con­sume dis­card­ed ma­te­ri­als mis­tak­ing them for food, which of­ten leads to their demise.As we con­tin­ue to en­joy our beau­ti­ful "lim­ing" spots, let us start walk­ing with our "lit­ter pre­ven­tion kits" and dis­pose of our de­bris re­spon­si­bly. If the bins at the beach­es or rivers are filled with garbage, we can take our items home for dis­pos­al. Re­duc­ing our waste still re­mains the num­ber one ac­tion against lit­ter­ing, while reusing and re­cy­cling are al­so good prac­tices to con­sid­er when re­duc­ing the amount of waste we pro­duce each day.We chal­lenge you to as­sess your at­ti­tude to­wards lit­ter­ing and pledge to re­duce your in­di­vid­ual waste out­put. Each ac­tion, no mat­ter how in­con­se­quen­tial it may seem, can in­spire a change in our ac­tions to­ward the en­vi­ron­ment, and it's nev­er too late to start! To con­clude our ar­ti­cle, the clean-up team left Cha­cachacare Is­land that Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon with mixed feel­ings of ac­com­plish­ment and de­feat. We had com­plet­ed yet an­oth­er beach clean-up ex­er­cise and re­turned to shore with our loot, know­ing we were far from fin­ished.

Ma­rine Pol­lu­tion Part Two: A glob­al snap­shot will be fea­tured in next week's ar­ti­cle.

For more in­for­ma­tion, please vis­it www.ema.co.tt. If you have any com­ments or would like to con­tribute to this col­umn, please re­spond to ema­corner@ema.co.tt