Guest blog by Christine Hall, Visitor Experience Officer
On Saturday 19 September, a group of staff and volunteers got together and, donning litter pickers and rubbish bags (kindly supplied by the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team) took up the challenge of cleaning Minsmere’s beach. We were also joined by the Minsmere Young Wardens Group who were eager to get started.
Volunteers cleaning the beach. Photo by Christine Hall
The event was part of the annual Great British Beach Clean, coordinated by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). It is the UK's biggest beach clean up and survey, and every year thousands of people get involved all along the UK's coastline. The aim is to clear your beach and survey the first 100m stretch, with the survey results going towards the MCS annual summary report.
At first glance the beach looked quite clean but as we started looking closely in between the shingle and in amongst the grasses in the dunes we started to find a variety of smaller items. String/rope was the most abundant with 130 pieces found along with plastic items such as bottles/bottle caps, sweet wrappers, food containers and unknown pieces of plastics at 84. Fishing lines, hooks, a number of plastic bags, five balloons and even items of clothing such as a sock and a tie the list was ongoing.
All these items as can be harmful to seabirds and marine mammals as they can be mistaken for food or even used as part of nesting material resulting in young birds getting tangled and unable to leave the nest leading to starvation. Much of the rubbish clearly originates at sea (fishing gear for example), but the amount of plastic bags, balloons and bottles found show that our land-based rubbish easily finds its way into the sea too.
But it wasn’t all man-made items we came across, cuttlefish bones, mermaids purses (egg cases of rays, sharks and dogfish) and crab shells were dotted along the beach.
A beach clean is not only a fantastic way to help protect the wildlife on our shores but also a great day out in the fresh air.
But the day was far from over as it was also International Moon Night. Once the day started drawing to a close we were joined by the Darsham Astronomical Society to host an evening event. With a clear night sky and the choice of eight powerful telescopes to look through everyone had a superb views of the moon. In view were a number of maria (seas) - these are large, flat plains of solidified basaltic lava - and interesting landforms including the Descartes Highlands where Apollo 16 landed!
Moon watching. Photo by Christine Hall
As it was such a clear night star constellations such as the plough (also known as the big dipper) and Cassiopeia ('W' shape, formed by five bright stars) and the milky way were visible and pointed out. Another highlight was managing to see Saturn with its rings through a telescope. Once the moon went out of view behind the trees we had an interesting and informative talk by the internationally acclaimed astronomer, Professor Michael Rowen-Robinson about the Late Heavy Bombardment and the ‘Nice’ model of the Solar System.
The moon, by James Rowlands