29-06-2025
Sad 1,342kg detail in photos from remote beach reveals 'relentless' problem
It should be a picturesque Aussie oasis but there is one major problem plaguing this well known island. And these images show just how bad a global crisis has become.
In just a short 10 metre stretch of sand along Greta Beach on Australia's Christmas Island, volunteers found some 17,500 pieces of rubbish and marine debris washed up on the beach this week.
Sometimes referred to as the Galapagos of Australia, the protected area is a known hotspot for the endless stream of marine rubbish. While promoted for its inherent beauty, you don't have to go far reading the reviews on TripAdvisor to learn about the contaminating problem.
"Beautiful beach covered in ocean rubbish," the top review is titled.
"Don't let the plastic put you off. Go there, collect a rubbish bag at the start of the track and do the environment a favour," another reviewer wrote.
"Rubbish I am afraid, no I mean full of rubbish," a third review is titled.
The Tangaroa Blue Foundation coordinates a huge network of volunteers and uses the Australian Marine Debris Initiative to record rubbish washed up on Australian beaches. Its members were part of a team that removed a massive haul of trash from the beach.
"June brings huge volumes of marine debris. Despite our team's efforts, it was washing in faster than we could remove it, a stark reminder of the issue's relentless nature," the group said.
It's likely that just about every single piece came from another country. "This is a global problem with local impacts that demands international action," it said.
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The ocean surrounding Christmas Island was declared a marine park in 2022, making it Australia's second largest protected area, and complementing the already established National Park more than half the island.
The group shared photos online showing the grim extent of the scourge in the otherwise gorgeous area. In the end, they collected 33 bags of debris weighing a whopping 221 kilograms.
The group was joined this week by students from the Christmas Island District High School who also shared before and after photos following the extensive cleanup with that number surging.
"We successfully removed and audited 846kg of marine debris — plus an additional 496kg of hard plastic remnant. That's a total of 1,342kg of marine pollution cleared from Greta Beach," the school said.
Despite years of growing public awareness and initiatives to tackle plastic pollution, the overall problem isn't letting up, according to Tangaroa Blue's CEO Heidi Taylor.
"The question I often get asked is if it's getting better," she told Yahoo News recently. "And the answer is no".
"That's because the world's population is getting bigger and we keep using more and more stuff, even if the same percentage is being released into the environment, that would still equate to a greater volume.
"So overall, it is getting worse."
After more than 20 years of laboriously counting ocean rubbish, she has been part of building the "biggest database of marine debris in the southern hemisphere".
"I remember the days when we first started talking about marine debris and people thought we were talking about driftwood... It wasn't really on anyone's radar back then," she told Yahoo.
"The goal was if we knew where it was coming from, we then knew the right stakeholder group to engage to find a practical solution" to stop it."
People who want to help are encouraged to download the Australian Marine Debris Initiative app and start cataloguing what they find.
