A Tasmanian group of more than 20 volunteers has returned from a beach cleaning expedition in the Southern Ocean, having collected over 55,000 pieces of marine debris.
Team Clean have been picking up trash from Tasmanian beaches for 25 years now and have now collected a total of nearly 800,000 items.
Despite facing challenges, including large waves up to seven metres high during the journey, the team saw signs of their efforts paying off with a decrease in beach rubbish.
The crew cleaned a total of 11 beaches between South West Cape and Rocky Point, which coordinator Matt Dell said was a ‘rewarding and successful’ effort.
In a recent update on the group’s blog, Dell said 5,273 pieces of rubbish had been collected from the remote Coxes Bight area in just a single day.
“[This was] an impressive result given the amount of large items we lugged along the beach,” he said.