The reality about the marine ecology’s health is in stark contrast to what we experience in the water each day as surfers. To put it bluntly: the ocean is in a bad way. According to the Australian Marine Conservation Society we dump three times as much rubbish into the ocean than the weight of fish we take out of it (approx six million tonnes of rubbish every year). Humans – by acts of neglect such as this – are responsible for wiping out 90% of pre-existing marine life according to another study.

Margaret River couple, Heidi and Richard Taylor are not taking this kind of ocean abuse lying down. They’re fighting back. What began as  beach clean up around the Margaret River coastline has grown into an Australia-wide clean up campaign with data-gathering global ramifications. Tracks spoke to Heidi to get the full story.

The Marine Debris Project started off as a beach clean up effort, but it quickly turned into a much bigger project with two main goals. The first one is to remove as much rubbish from the beach and coastline as possible – if it’s not on the beach/ocean it can’t entangle or be eaten by a seabird or marine animal. Secondly to collect as much information as we can on what rubbish is on each beach. Whenever possible we trace it back to the source and look at ways of reducing that item from ending up in the ocean in the first place.

2. Where does most of the marine debris come from? Who are the bad guys?

Marine Debris comes from a lot of different sources, some are accidental others are deliberate. The main groups of contributors to the rubbish problem are the shipping industry, recreational and commercial fisheries, beach users/visitors, stormwater runoff and illegal dumping. It can come from local, state, national and even international sources as debris can travel thousands of kilometres and be kept out at sea by gyres and currents for up to 10 years or even longer before it ends up on a beach.

There are laws and legislation to target people that litter, but unfortunately enforcement is really difficult. We really need to change the general public’s perception of littering and show them the impacts. 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals getting killed every year by marine debris, 46,000 pieces of plastic in each square mile of ocean, these are really disturbing facts, especially if you have any an affinity with the ocean.

The Australian Government has published a Draft Threat Abatement Plan for marine debris so it is on the national radar, but how to tackle the already millions of items floating in the ocean is a huge task. Our research and data has been used in reports, legislation and educational strategies to target polluters, but the only way to stop marine debris is for people to start putting their rubbish in a bin instead of chucking it into the environment.

3. How long has the program been running and how many groups are getting involved?

Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society started in 2004 in the Margaret River region in WA. From there we have projects in Broome in the North West, Fraser Island in QLD, Far North QLD, Torres Strait Islands, Victoria, New Zealand, Hawaii and Fiji. We are hoping to get volunteers to register their beaches all over Australia and the South Pacific to enable us to collect more data and of course help to clean up our beaches and the ocean even more. We also work with schools around Australia, Hawaii and New Zealand who have signed up and do regular clean ups and submit data.

4. Any particular individuals or groups who have been particularly proactive? Who can we give a shout out to?

We have a few thousand volunteers, and they are awesome, the hours they spend picking up rubbish every month is really inspiring. We’ve had a lot of support from Keep Australia Beautiful Council in both WA and QLD, Coastwest, Project Aware, local and state government agencies and many community groups. This year we’ve formed a partnership with Surfrider Foundation Australia which is a great way to promote the project through people that spend a lot of time in the water. We’ve collected well over 500,000 pieces of debris from the coast since 2004!

My husband Richard and I formed Tangaroa Blue together in 2004. Tangaroa is the Maori and Polynesian God of the Ocean – one of his laws is that if you look after him, he’ll look after you. We asked for permission to use this name from the Maori Elders and a Maori artist designed our logo for us. From there a few thousand volunteers have signed up and regularly help out with clean up events. We have been lucky to secure some funding in WA and QLD , but really rely on donations and grants to keep things going. I’d love to eventually be able to focus on this full time and hopefully with the growth of the project we will attract sponsors to make this happen. Our big goal is to secure a boat so we can get to sections of the Australian coastline that aren’t accessible by road and to help remove larger things like ghost nets and reach areas that attract large volumes of rubbish. For example, there are sections of beach up in the Cape York area that have rubbish piled up that is over 2 metres high!

6. What’s your surfing background?

Richard is the surfer, he’s surfed all his life, first while growing up in Auckland and then spending most of the 80’s and 90’s switching between Hawaii and Bali. We spent 4 years in the South West of WA which is an awesome place and try and do a Hawaii trip every year. Richard’s passion is surfing the North Shore of Oahu. I’m a real beginner surfer, but my passion is scuba diving and being underwater, I’ve been a diving instructor for over 10 years, and Richard a dive instructor for 25 years. We are both also

boat skippers so we are always on the ocean and make our living from the ocean and that’s why we feel obligated and passionate about keeping it clean and protecting it.

We’ve had such awesome experiences with marine life like Hawaiian monk seals (only 1200 left in the world), Humpback Whales, Minke Whales, turtles and sharks, it is just horrifying to think of how much plastic they have to swim through to find something to eat!

For more information check out: www.oceancare.org.au