The International Coastal Cleanup Singapore programme at Pulau Ubin collects annual data from Chek Jawa. In the process, we made yet another dent to years of accumulated trash on this precious marine environment. Determined volunteers huffed and puffed as they collected fine debris and dragged out tyres and long-abandoned fishing nets embedded in the sand and mud of Chek Jawa’s shores.

Getting to Chek Jawa means getting up really early! Volunteers reached Changi Village early to board bumboats to the island where eagerly awaiting Ubin taxi-vans brought them to Chek Jawa after a bumpy, 15 minute ride! The advance team from the Raffles Museum’s ICCS ‘Otters’ thought we were early but we were beaten to the first bumboat by an eager volunteer from the US who had only recently arrived in Singapore!

Looking down at the efforts of the 222 volunteers who removed 2.1 tones of marine debris were majestic white-bellied sea eagles, soaring high in the skies above. A few volunteers also saw a troop of wild boars foraging in the rubber plantation near House No. 1 who must have welcomed the removal of so much plastic from their island sanctuary. Other volunteers exclaimed over dinner plate-sized jellyfish they saw at the low water mark and a day after the cleanup, one participant is still abuzz by the mud lobster he saw in bright daylight!

Chek Jawa was once the site of a sizeable kampung village, and this is revealed by remnants of structures. The couple of wooden fishing jetties left behind jetty leg stumps and these are now host to numerous abandoned fishing nets, some stuck deep in the shifting sands and mud. Not all are old though, and new nets indicate the continued dumping of unwanted nets by local fishermen. Nets trap and kill organisms especially the many species of crabs that make Chek Jawa their home. Horseshoe crabs are especially vulnerable and the indestructible nets wreak havoc on this endangered living fossil we are lucky to still be able to see in our seas.

Forty blue drums irretrievably stuck in tangle of the tree line fronting the shore were proven to be extricable when volunteers bravely ventured into the thickets to remove a good number before the fast rising tide forced many to be left behind – this time! Less noticeable but easily outnumbering these large items were the omnipresent plastic bottles, styrofoam bits and plastic bags that plague our shores.

A conservative estimate suggests that we removed only 5% of the total load at Chek Jawa. Help to tackle this could come from small, low-impact, year-round cleanups as has been coordinated for some of the mangrove sites elsewhere. Tourists on NParks’ special intertidal tours at Chek Jawa might be happy to contribute to this effort once they learn about the issue. A 30 minute cleanup exercise after the regularly-conducted tour would do wonders!

Let’s all think about a regular check-out of the marine debris load at Chek Jawa. Slowly but surely, we will relieve the ecosystem of the burden man has imposed for so many years.

Andy Dinesh,
Pulau Ubin Zone Coordinator
International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

Thanks to Ivan Kwan for the photos!

Posted by email from International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (posterous)

Four of us from ICC Singapore joined staff of PT. Bintan Resort Cakrawala for the inaugural International Coastal Cleanup at Pulau Bintan, Indonesia.

The area we tackled is off the tourist route but an important turtle landing site at Pasir Panjang, along the north coast of Bintan Island. We had an invigorating morning and the thunderous rain held off long enough for us to tackle the beach and remove thousands of plastic bottles, more shoes and slippers than we ever saw before in our lives and much larger pieces of styrofoam than we are used to!

There was some serious hauling of trash up a small slope and the piles of major categories of trash was something we had been unable to do in Singapore. Now we’ll be able to use those photos to good effect during slide talks in future.

See Ranan Samanya’s album.

Hi all,

Missed out on a chance to help in ICCS as a site buddy?
Want to do it again?
Here’s another chance to do it!

We are looking for site buddies for 2 companies at Lim Chu Kang and Changi Beach.

Do contact me for more details!

Regards
huaqin
huaqin@gmail.com

70 scouts from Tampines District Scouts tackled 1.25km of Pasir Ris Beach this morning. They had a much sunnier day at the beach!

The main source of debris was cigarettes and lighters. In fact Nicholas Koh reports, “Recreation is most likely the main source of pollution, and as a result of social activities, smokers will throw their cigarettes and smoking-related litter into the sea.”

Photos on Flickr.

See the full data set for beaches on the ICCS Webpage. Mangrove results (still pending one site) were up earlier. Overall results and comparison will follow later.

PARTICIPATION SUMMARY
Total number of volunteers: 2,351
Total number of volunteers working on card: 2,343
Total number of trash bags filled: 912
Total number of items collected: 80,548
Total weight of trash collected (kg): 5,245
Total area cleaned (m): 13,580

DEBRIS SUMMARY
Total Shoreline and Recreational Activities: 36,682
Total Ocean/Waterway Activities: 6,282
Total Smoking-Related Activities: 13,875
Total Dumping Activities: 1,114
Total Medical/Personal Activities: 163
Total Debris of Local Concern: 22,432

Uploaded with Skitch!

Yasim Abidin has posted photos of the Sembawang Beach cleanup by Yio Chu Kang CC & NYP Geocouncil on flickr with the tag “sembawangbeachcleaning2007″

Photos from East Coast park from Zone Captain Vu Tinh Ky – see the flickr album.

More photos from Singapore Science Centre’s cleanup at Changi Beach – see the Flickr Album.

Coca-Cola has sent a small but enthusiastic team to the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore for the past two years so this year we decided they were ideal for Lim Chu Kang mangroves! The photo albums are online at Flickr: Album 1, Album 2, Album 3 & Album 4.

Site Captain Dewi Anggraini reported (excerpt):

“The cleanup started at about 835 a.m. Participants were given mosquito repellent, t-shirts, tongs and safety boots (for the safety team), etc. They were enthusiastic about doing the cleanup. Initially, they were clearing the sandy area which has a very light load but eventually more teams moved towards the forested parts of the mangrove where the trash load is a lot higher. Some were very excited to find unexpected trash items like big containers, TV set, condoms, bra and big tyres!

At about 9.30 a.m. dark clouds gathered and gradually the wind got very strong, so we decided to ask participants to start moving out trash bags and bulky items to the to the Trash Loading Point (TLP). Near the TLP, two teams were formed to weigh the bagged trash using the weighing scales. Bulky items such as big containers and tyres were not weighed as they were too heavy to hook to the scales.

Another team consolidated the data cards. Instead of a calculator the additions were done by a person who was ’supposedly good at maths’ :p”

Earlier this year I had decided to switch to Flickr even though the old workhorse iView Media Pro had its advantages. I had been using that for all the earlier years. However my server is preventing uploads so just as well!

And Flickr has done a great job, and all of this has been really easy. You can download the originals and comment too! And insert photos feeds into your blogs, like I did in the sidebar. The list of photo albums will be maintained here.

• Kranji mangroves
• Lim Chu Kang mangrove – Set 1, Set 2, Set 3 & Set 4
• Pulau Ubin
• Kallang Basin – Set 1 , Set 2 (EarthLink)
• Changi Beach
• Punggol Beach – RI (updated, 12.24am)

I’ll feature them individually and to get the ball rolling are some shots from Kranji Mangroves by Kenneth Pinto:

Ng Kai Scene, the South Zone Coordinator brought in the data and photos from the zone she coordinates in partnership with Kallang’s flagship group, Waterways Watch Society.

The groups that groups that participated in that area are the German European School, NUS High School, NTU Earthlink, Compassvale Secondary and Waterways Watch Society. See the Flick set here.