A group of ‘beach huggers’ visited a remote west coast beach on northern Vancouver Island to #cleanthecoast last weekend. The group of friends and volunteers organized a helicopter-supported beach clean, declining to confirm the location, saying “if you know it, you know it.”
It’s hard for people to access, but for ocean debris this beach is a great parking lot.
Volunteers on the ground filled 17 mega bags — roughly 17 cubic meters of junk — with pieces of ships, styrofoam blocks, buoys, ripped up bottles, shoes, and ghost nets. Wait, shoes?
“It’s because we’re on the coast and the currents bring stuff here. Japan has a tsunami … and they end up here,” said organizer Jill Laviolette.
It’s the small bits of plastic that bother her the most, because they float back out to sea.
“Animals think they’re food and eat them and they die. That just kills me. I can’t sleep at night.”
She’s been picking up plastic from beaches ever since she can remember.
Growing up in Holberg she’d find plastic bottles washed in the long inlet from the Pacific Ocean, and it’s only getting worse.
With so many helicopters already working in the area, she thought it would be a natural fit to get them to help deal with some of this refuse.
Jim Bleaney, Ashley Tapp, Jeremy Browne, Jessica Brown, Tiffany Fisher and Lachlan Palmer and Laviolette were the ground crew.
They thought West Coast Helicopters pilot Mike Aldersey, who donated his time, would have to make several trips to collect all the bags, but with such light cargo he managed in just four to five flights.
Bleaney with Fortech Industries was originally going to sponsor the trip, covering fuel costs etc., but West Coast Helicopters decided to cover their own fuel costs, freeing up Bleaney to cover the next trip Laviolette is planning for September. A local trucker, Dan Carter, volunteered to pick up the full bags of garbage from a drop-off point and transfer them to 7 Mile Landfill, where the Regional District of Mount Waddington waived tipping fees.
Laviolette offered to run a fundraiser to cover fuel costs, but Carter refused.
“No, I care about this. This is what I do,” he told Laviolette.
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