Media Release - Team Clean sailing west to fight a wave of rubbish

The largest ever Tasmanian South West Marine Debris Cleanup expedition sets sail from 12pm next Wednesday. The annual volunteer-run expedition has been cleaning up Tasmania’s wildest beaches for the past 15 years.

In 2014 alone, the cleanup team removed 48,340 pieces of rubbish from Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area on the west coast.

“A toxic wave of plastic is trashing our oceans. Marine debris travels from across the seas and washes ashore on some of the planet’s most isolated and spectacular beaches in western Tasmania,” said cleanup coordinator Matt Dell.

“with total worldwide plastic production doubling every ten years the amount of plastic that is present in our oceans is likely to get much worse without a concerted effort to properly dispose or recycle used plastics”

“The annual cleanup keeps our most precious wild places clean, documents what is washing ashore and is a key part of the global effort to fight the toxic wave of plastic that’s trashing our oceans.

With a four-boat fleet and a crew of over 30 hardy volunteers, Dell is expecting 2015 to be the biggest expedition yet.

The team launched a crowdfunder earlier this week to raise much needed funds for food and fuel supplies – www.pozible.com/teamclean

For more information, contact Matt Dell: 0419 922 887

Final checks

Things have been running pretty smoothly over the last few days, the dry and fresh stores have been ordered from our generous sponsors at The Hill Street Grocers and the Wursthaus.  We have had the usual last minute hiccups with a few crew pulling out and one of the boats on a quick dash fishing mission up the North East coast. At this stage the Velocity, Odalisque and the Breaksea will try and get away early Wednesday to push along the south coast before an expected westerly change during the afternoon which will make travelling very unpleasant. The Diamantina will hopefully be departing from Margate around 6pm that evening.

6 Days to departure

Well its that hectic time of the year again when we start getting the boats and crews geared up for the ultimate beachcombing adventure.  This year the Velocity, Diamantina and Breaksea will be joined by Pieter van der Woude's new charter vessel the Odalisque II. This flotilla will take the largest contingent ever of volunteers to the remote beaches of Southwest Tasmania. Many thanks to the myriad of generous sponsors and particularly the fishermen for donating their vessels and expertise as none of the past 15 years efforts would be possible without them. We have a number of new faces joining the team this year and there short bios can be found on the Team page.

The weather for departure day and the few after that look interesting to say the least.
One thing is for sure its not going to be a nice calm trip along the bottom of Tasmania.

2015 Raffle

Fundraiser 27th December at the Republic Bar

Patagonia Web Movie Released

A big thanks to Mick Waters and the folks at Patagonia for putting together this short piece on last years cleanup. Enjoy this and other videos about the cleanup on the Movies page

ABC Open Cleanup Video

Have a look at the latest cleanup video produced by Troy Melville as part of the ABC Open project.

 
South West Cleanup from ABC Open Southern Tasmania on Vimeo.