It is with mixed emotions that one visits a turtle rescue centre with no turtles. One’s better self delights in stories of those nursed back from the brink and released in joyous, tearful ceremonies. But, I’ll admit, I really did want a selfie with a sea turtle.
I’m in the Whitsundays, with an eccentric group of volunteers, but we aren’t saving sea turtles. For the first time in more than a year, there aren’t any around to save.
Instead we tick off bucket list items of a less glamorous, more literal nature.
First, we sort through mounds of litter plucked from the beaches of some of the region’s 74 islands. The junk is grouped in buckets with detailed lists pegged on to them. Initially these buckets are categorised according to broad use: bottles; thongs and caps; debris from boats smashed in cyclones; fishing lures, rods and line.
Then the buckets are individually emptied on to a table and the contents are sorted more precisely. Chunks of irrigation pipe are counted separately from plastic whipper snipper blades. Electrical cords and sailing ropes have their own tallies.
Sarah Wilson, a long-term local volunteer, is on the floor sorting small piles: toothbrushes, lighters, clothes pegs, bottle caps, unidentifiable shards of plastic, combs.
“Who even uses combs any more?” she asks.
Each item is listed and counted, just as the volunteers of the Eco Barge Clean Seas project have been doing for the past 13 years.
Later, most of the plastic will be processed and reused, including by a company that makes bodysurfing handplanes.
The meticulous trash cataloguing is done so the project’s founder, Libby Edge, can feed the raw data to organisations who use it to fight littering at its source, and to researchers trying to understand and reduce the impact of plastics in the ocean.
It is a deeply personal quest that Edge, a former commercial skipper who was raised on a yacht, has poured her soul into since 2009. But she has led hundreds of people on the journey with her.
“We’re dealing with a really dark issue,” Edge says. “But when you do it with a band of volunteers, it gives you hope in humanity.”
On this day in May, Edge, Wilson and volunteer coordinator Imogen Grace are joined by a grey nomad and two young women, who are both travelling the country in vans.
The task lends itself to banter. Do you know any free campsites? Where is the best coral? Should an unused condom be placed on the “sporting goods” or “recreational activities” list?
Jess McMillan, a 25-year-old anthropology and philosophy student from Wangaratta, tells us she is nursing suspected broken ribs from a stack on…
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