[imagesource: StrandloperProject / Facebook]

What began as a desire to learn more about the impact of recreational fishing along the Southern Cape coastline has evolved into the Strandloper Project – a comprehensive series of coastal hikes monitoring the density and distribution of ocean plastic garbage.

Since 2019, in their first series of expeditions, volunteers of the local Strandloper Project have hiked 960km along the shoreline between Hermanus and Cape Recife in the east.

The Strandloper Project originated in January 2018 when a group of concerned locals in the Garden Route organised a reef clean-up dive to remove snagged recreational fishing tackle from the inshore reef at Gericke’s Point 4km west of the coastal village of Sedgefield.

While sorting the recovered tackle after their first cleanup dive, the group realised that the problem of snagged fishing tackle extended beyond the mere issue of aesthetic degradation.

A focus of this year’s expedition will be to document snagged and discarded monofilament (fishing line) used by recreational fishermen. In the first series of expeditions, the worst affected shoreline of washed-out monofilament was during the 2021 expedition between Arniston and Hermanus.

On 5 October, the team of six hikers, supported by their backup driver, started hiking from Pringle Bay to Struisbaai, a distance of approximately 220km. They expect to complete the hike on Friday 18 October.

Using a variety of survey methods, all plastic and fishing waste is documented with CyberTracker, which generates a geo-referenced dataset for a comprehensive study following the trip. The principal survey method is the Trashy20 survey, which is carried out every 5 km.

Each survey includes three 10m x 2m transects at the high water level when every piece of plastic pollution and fishing gear is collected, categorised, and tallied.

Based on surveys conducted during their 2019 voyage, the Strandloper Project has identified the top 20 forms of plastic detected, earning the moniker Trashy20, which gives vital information into the causes of plastic pollution in the ocean.

 

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You can follow the progress of the Strandloper Project on their 2024 coastal research expedition on their social media platforms or visit their website at www.strandloperproject.org.

[source:mosselbayadvertiser]