This was the link which spurred on the move for a year-round cleanup :
It was a glorious Saturday morning. The tide was already low below 1.0m at 6am and this had left the lower intertidal area exposed. At 7am, the morning sun peeking from behind the low clouds provided for a fabulous scene.
I had gone down in advance of the expected group to take advantage of the lower tide as i knew there was lots of trash in the still-submerged parts of the shore. The lower tide would make it easier to reach submerged items and those items caught amongst the stones in the fringing artificial seawall/breakwater.
This metal tin can was pulled out from the middle part of the shore and it was covers with sludgy sand. There had been an oil spill in 2010 and unfortunately there was not much of a proper cleanup done along this stretch of shoreline. This is probably because this shore is not heavily used recreationally by sizeable number of the public. Most times, only a bare handful of fishermen are seen on this shore and usually on the weekends. If you dig a little, you get to see the residual crude mixed with sand and there is still a thin sheen of oil which appears on the water as a result of the seepage from the now buried crude residue.
A styrofoam buoy with monofilament fishing line tied to it. The line had gotten stuck in the rocky seawall closeby. Monofilament fishing line can take several hundred years to disappear from the shore. Worse still, the styrofoam breaks up into numerous tiny pieces which cover the shore. Styrofoam pieces will also persist for a very very long time further plasticising the environment.
A sharp glass shard glistening in the morning sun. There were many such shards lying on the sand as well as below the water....one reason why it is not safe to go barefoot on the shore. This particular shore is also a favourite haunt of stonefish. Luckily, none were encountered that morning. They are very hard to spot in the water.
If only we could only leave footprints in the sand.
Unfortunately, that sand is now interspersed with micro-plastics.
(Read about micro-plastics in Singapore's coastal environment :
One of the early-bird fishermen returning after checking on his traps on the other side of the seawall. He was carrying a styrofoam box containing his catch and also an inflated inner tube used as a flotation device.
The high shore where the shore creepers start was filled with pieces of styrofoam of various sizes amongst other largely plastic debris.
It's tough work trying to pick out all the bits. An eternal impossibility as this plastic will persist for many hundreds of years.
In the water, more trash floats in even as more volunteers arrive to tackle the shore.
Some like-minded volunteers, who came prepared with boots and ready to get wet, went straight into the water picking up various plastic packaging items like snack-food wrapping and used mineral water containers. Most of these items have a foreign origin as the items are not sold in local shops.
Marine trash has now long become an international problem.
Ocassionally, the volunteers would come across a delightful seagrass patch or an anemone...signs that the shore is still hanging on despite the recent oil spill.
Perhaps there would have been more seagrass, anemones and other marine animals but for the oil spill?
Some things need to be dug out with considerable effort after having been buried in the sand for a long time.
And after collecting trash for about 90 minutes, and just in time to avoid getting cut-off by the rising tide, it was time to remove the collected debris from the lower shore and weigh the collection.
A human chain was formed along the seawall and items were passed along to the trash clearance point. Arrangements had been made earlier to have the National Environment Agency trash contractors come by and clear the pile after the clean-up. Thank you NEA!
In total, 302 kilogrammes of trash was removed from this shore by 34 volunteers in about 90 minutes.
Despite the good work of the volunteers, there was still a lot of trash which could not be picked up during this cleanup.
Further, more trash eg. plastic bags could be seen in the water arriving with the incoming tide.
Read more about the 11th Feb 2012 Clean-Up :
The main Singapore Coastal Clean-Up pages :
Here is a clip of the debrief by N. Sivasothi after the cleanup :
