Date: 15.01.2023
Author: Anna
Position: Jaco, Costa Rica
Ship: Pelican of London

Beach Clean up

This morning we left to participate in a beach clean organised by Mare Blu, a conservation organization. They have volunteers from all over the world working on their project.

On the way to the beach, they explained to us what would happen to the plastic after it had been collected. Firstly, the volunteers would sort the plastic into different types.

Then, depending on what it was, it would be recycled accordingly.

They work with multiple other projects which recycle the plastics. One melts, hardens, and then grinds the plastic into a powder which is used in construction and another reuses toys, upcyclying them and then donating them to children in poverty.

When we got to the beach, they donated new school supplies and backpacks to two girls from a local family on behalf of OceanCollege.

We worked for an hour and a half on a section of the beach, there was so so much plastic everywhere. We also found a lot of strange items that had washed up. I found a rubber duck, a sock, and a hat.

We had to stay at least five meters away from the water to avoid crocodiles, and we all wore hats to protect us from the sun.

When time was up, we had so many bags that everyone had to carry two or three each. We also collected lots of car tires.

Crocodile tour!

In the afternoon we went on a fantastic crocodile tour. They handed out a bird identification guide so that we could check what types of birds we spotted.

The tour guide was really funny and interesting. He spoke about the differences between alligators and crocodiles, crocodile behavior, birds, and each individual croc that we saw. All of the crocodiles had very unique names such as, Mike Tyson, Lady Gaga, and Captain Hook.

The guide explained that today was not a very good day for seeing crocodiles because there were lots of fishing boats around.

We also looked at a mangrove estuary and talked about why mangroves are really important for the environment.