From March to Sep­tem­ber every year, Trinidad is host to the ma­jes­tic leatherback tur­tles as they trav­el across the At­lantic Ocean to nest on our east coast beach­es. Sea tur­tles have been around for more than 110 mil­lion years and play a sig­nif­i­cant role in main­tain­ing healthy oceans.

Matu­ra Beach in Trinidad is a pop­u­lar nest­ing site and habi­tat for leatherback tur­tles and keep­ing beach shore­lines clear of de­bris that may ham­per the fe­male sea tur­tles’ jour­ney from the ocean to their nest­ing sites is crit­i­cal.  De­bris, es­pe­cial­ly ma­rine waste, is a pre­dom­i­nant fac­tor in their en­tan­gle­ment and death along this jour­ney.

The an­nu­al Matu­ra Beach Clean-Up, spear­head­ed by the award-win­ning en­vi­ron­ment con­ser­va­tion group, Na­ture Seek­ers, took place from Sun­day 6th to Sat­ur­day 12th March 2022.  It in­volved the col­lec­tion and re­moval of glass, plas­tic, met­al, and degrad­able ma­te­ri­als from the shore­line, to fa­cil­i­tate suc­cess­ful tur­tle nest­ing.

Em­ploy­ees from Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL) part­nered joined Na­ture Seek­ers to help clean-up the beach on Fri­day 11th March 2022.  Over 340 bags were col­lect­ed (6,986 lbs), with 83% of the waste be­ing plas­tic and the rest old flips flops, Sty­ro­foam ob­jects, fish­ing nets and ropes and oth­er macro-plas­tics.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed, Kur­tis Rudd, ex­plained this year’s clean-up was more than just the col­lec­tion of trash.

“I am re­al­ly im­pressed by the tremen­dous turnout and par­tic­i­pa­tion by our staff for this Matu­ra Beach Clean Up. More than 25 em­ploy­ees came out and cov­ered spe­cif­ic zones of the sev­en-mile-long Matu­ra beach; pick­ing up de­bris such as bro­ken glass, logs, plas­tic bot­tles, and gen­er­al waste that can in­jure beach­go­ers and have a huge detri­men­tal ef­fect on lo­cal ma­rine life and ecosys­tems,” Kur­tis Rudd stat­ed. “Ac­tiv­i­ties such as this not on­ly as­sists in con­ser­va­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment but en­sures the au­then­tic con­nec­tion of tourism of­fi­cials to the in­dus­try.”

The TTL CEO said the time has come to “look at the way we live and re­duce our con­sump­tion of sin­gle-use plas­tic”.

“It is crit­i­cal that we clean up our shore­lines, pro­tect ma­rine life and sup­port our com­mu­ni­ty coastal tourism economies,” he said.

He added: “Na­ture Seek­ers must be ap­plaud­ed for their long-stand­ing work in en­vi­ron­ment con­ser­va­tion and ded­i­ca­tion to the pro­tec­tion of the nest­ing sites of the leatherback tur­tles.”