Ocean Plastics clean ups and Low Carbon living - interview
- Tyrone Probert
- 3 days ago
- 9 min read
We continue our Salty Sea Blog with a catch up with friend of Ecotribo - Steve of Clean Ocean Sailing. Along with his partner Moni and a trusty crew of volunteers they clean up and recover ghost nets and ocean plastics by means of their beautiful old sailboat down on the south Cornish coast.
Steve and his partner Monika founded Clean Ocean Sailing eight years ago with the vision of cleaning up the Cornish Coast and beyond in the most sustainable way possible, using an old sailing boat, rowing boats and kayaks. Their mission is to clean up parts of the coast that others cannot reach with minimal carbon footprint.
Steve, can you share more about yourself and what inspired your mission and life on the boat?
I was born in Cornwall in the early 70's and I grew up totally in love with the coast and our ocean - I spent all my spare time surfing, sailing , swimming, diving ... basically enjoying that big blue wobbly thing that surrounds our funny little peninsula!
After renting houses and then later getting a mortgage and a family I lived in my van for a while and loved the independence, low-cost living and self reliance. I found it was a more sustainable way of being happy, living in a small mobile home!
When we found Annie (our boat) some 20 years ago now, the space she offered was a massive improvement on the little van. The cosiness of the woodburner and simple pleasures of off grid life ... catching rainwater on the roof and making electric from the solar panels and the ability to just untie the ropes from the quay and sail anywhere in the world was so appealing to me and still is to this day. Then when I met Monika and we made our own family, Annie seemed the perfect platform to host others - volunteers to help us use this old fishing boat to go fishing again but not for fish - for plastic.
Was there a specific moment or experience that made you realize you had to take action for the ocean?
I guess I’ve always been picking up plastic, whether walking down the beach to go for a surf or taking the dog for a walk if I’ve seen something blowing around in the wind I would always grab it and stuff it up the sleeve of my wetsuit. But it was really a sailing trip to the Isles of Scilly a long time ago, when I ended up on a little island called Annet in a canoe with my friend Adam and our puppy Labrador Rosie. I was stuck there for a while because of bad weather so during my time there I explored the island.
I was horrified to see the south and the west side of the island several feet deep in washed up plastic rubbish. I spent all my time trying to carry as much as I could fit in my Canadian canoe but I realise that we really needed to come back with help and a bigger boat!
So what’s the most rewarding part of the work you do?
It’s really fun to sail a century old traditional boat to explore parts of the coast you can’t get to by land. The most rewarding part for me is when we've found a secret beach and we've spent all day busting our guts moving boulders to wrestle out trawler nets out and pick up every last tiny little piece of plastic stuck in amongst the seaweed on the strand line. At the end of the day I can look back on that beautiful little cove and see that it’s now pristine again, for me that is the best feeling in the world.
From your perspective, what are the biggest challenges facing our oceans today?
I see that our oceans face several massive challenges ... the most obvious one to us at the forefront of tackling plastic pollution is that the UV from the sun and the action of the waves breaks up these ocean plastics over time into micro plastics that are then virtually impossible to collect.
The vast quantities of plastics us humans are putting in the oceans globally seems to be turning our seas into a huge soup of micro plastics that then end up in marine wildlife, the food chain and us.
The most tragic day of our life was finding an 85 foot Fin whale washed up on the coast. The autopsy showed she was essentially healthy but disorientated and lost. I wondered if it could’ve been to do with the noise in the ocean from human activity?
There are so many vessels - pleasure craft, commercial shipping, military vessels - all using sonar to measure the depth of the sea and navigate. All this subsonic noise must be deafening to these beautiful creatures and caused them immeasurable harm.
How do you see this plastic pollution issue impacting marine life and coastal communities?
Whilst doing beach cleanups we have tragically found several seabirds and marine mammals dead or dying due to ingestion or entanglement in plastic pollution / lost or abandoned fishing gear. This is the most heartbreaking part of what we do. It’s horrible to think of how these creatures must have suffered, but this inspires us to keep on trying to make the biggest difference we can.
It also seems extremely unfair on coastal communities especially those who rely on fishing or tourism to have their homes, harbours, coves and beaches covered in plastic pollution from all over the world.
We’ve been extremely impressed with how these communities come together and work hard to clean up other people’s rubbish.
Yes, it's so inspiring! So many people feel overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. What would you say to those who want to help but don’t know where to start?
Plastic pollution and climate change can seem like an immeasurably huge problem. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the scale of it but I know that every little piece of plastic picked up before it ends up in the marine environment is potentially millions of pieces of microplastic prevented from polluting the water. There is something like 8 billion of us humans living on this planet, can you imagine the impact we would have if everyone of us did a tiny thing?
Can you share a recent mission you've been on?
We were recently notified by a member of the public about a large piece of ghost gear washed up in a beautiful place called Gwynver. Seeing photos of it, we soon realised this was going to be one hell of a mission as the only access to this beach involves over 300 steps down a steep cliff path!
We called on other Beach cleaning organisations and got together a team of people.
We spent the day hauling this massive trawl net across the rocks and up all the steps.
It took some four or five times up and down the steps to get everything off the beach and up to the car park where it can be transported away to be recycled.
It was an incredible collaboration of many like-minded and highly motivated individuals giving up their spare time and working extremely hard to protect marine life from the huge danger a net this size would pose if left in the marine environment .
What are some of the most innovative or inspiring solutions you’ve seen in tackling ocean plastic pollution?
I see and read about lots of inspiring solutions being rolled out globally to try to tackle the problem of plastic pollution. We have a sea bin in our local harbour that just bobs up and down carefully catching any floating detritus, whilst not catching wildlife and tiny creatures that live there.
Other projects across the world to celebrate are booms across rivers and barriers of bubbles attempting to prevent plastics flowing down rivers entering the oceans,
Most inspiringly I see coastal communities coming together spending their spare time doing beach cleanups and inspiring others. If people spend their time cleaning up the beach of plastic pollution perhaps they will think twice about their shopping habits when purchasing food other products in unnecessary plastic packaging.
How do you collaborate with other organizations, brands, or communities to drive change?
We have a really strong community down here in Cornwall all working really hard together to clean up our coast. It’s really awesome to collaborate with businesses and brands who are focused on the plastic pollution crisis.
At Ecotribo, we have turned your retrieved ghost nets into products. What role do you think circular solutions like this play in the future of ocean conservation?
Products made from the plastics we collect is a obviously a great solution to the problem we tackle. The even bigger effect is that every product made from recycled plastic is one less drop of oil extracted from underground and all of the footprint associated with the transport, refining and further transport of goods made from crude oil. This practice is so horrendously inefficient and costly to our planet and risks our future we must move to a circular economy urgently. To know that the plastics we collect feed into a circular economy is really inspiring and gives me hope that us humans can change our ways and have the products we need without so much damage to our wonderful planet .
What do you think businesses could be doing to protect our oceans?
I would urge all businesses to carefully look into where they source the materials they need and how this is transported. What is the real impact?
Careful research is needed to run your business in a truly sustainable way. Where to source your energy/ raw materials and how to manufacture / distribute your product with the most minimal impact on the environment. It is inevitable that there will be some negative impact - everything us humans do has a negative environmental impact but it’s important to minimise this and to offset that by funding charities and other organisations that have a positive impact.
How can individuals support eco-friendly businesses and make more sustainable choices in their daily lives?
I would urge individuals to think carefully about every product they buy. Where was it made? How was it transported? Is there a more local sustainable option?
Think carefully about the cost and I don’t mean just the financial cost. I mean the real cost, the cost to our home planet Earth. There are many awesome businesses manufacturing products from beach-found and other recycled materials. Buy into a local circular economy, not a destructive global single use solution just to save a few quid.
What’s next for you? Any exciting projects or goals for the future?
We are currently working very hard on repairs to our mothership “Annie” getting her ready for another big Isles of Scilly cleanup mission in August.
We are also running our Ocean well-being project again this year - a social outreach project to offer sailing trips and remote beach cleanup opportunities to individuals from all walks of life who wouldn’t normally get such opportunities.
We are trying to find a site that could become a hub for Cornwall. A physical space - a free to use drop off point for individuals and organisations who do beach clean cleanups to drop off what they’ve collected where it can be sorted, cleaned and made ready to send off to businesses that use these materials, to manufacture products in a circular economy.
Long term we hope to inspire others around the world to clean up in a low impact sustainable way and feed into a circular economy where ever they may live .
If you could change one thing about the way we interact with the ocean, what would it be?
We need to change many many things in order to protect our oceans!
I guess if I had to choose just one thing it would be our attitude - how we think of the sea. I would love for people to think of our oceans as our sanctuary ... it’s where we all came from originally and it sustains our world. We literally cannot live without it.
It is by far the biggest part of our planet but this does not mean that it is unaffected by the way we live our human lives, we must consider its health and vitality as it sustains us all so please please think about how to help our blue planet, not harm her.
Finally Steve, what gives you hope for the future of our oceans?
I remain hopeful for the future health of our oceans - I hope people are increasingly listening to the scientists that inform and warn us of the impact our ways are having on our oceans.
I’m constantly in awe of the businesses that are changing to a more sustainable circular economy reducing negative impact on the world by moving to renewable energy and low impact transport,
I see the next generation coming forward with incredible innovation and ideas.
I trust and hope that us humans are clever enough to change our ways and work in harmony with nature for the sake of all future generations and the health and happiness of everyone and everything that lives on planet earth.
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