PLEASE DONATE TO OUR CURRENT JUSTGIVING PAGE HERE:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/cleanoceansailing2020

We are Clean Ocean Sailing. A group of environmental volunteers, working to clean our coasts and oceans sustainably under sail, and raise awareness about ocean plastics.

Most of our work centres around the beautiful Helford River in Cornwall, where our founders Monika and Steve live in Gweek with Rosie the dog and baby Simon. With groups of volunteers, Clean Ocean Sailing coordinates regular beach cleans down the river to the coves innaccessable by land which are overflowing with plastic waste. We will now be venturing further, to the Isles of Scilly, and to do this, we need your help.

We will travel from Cornwall to the Scillies on our boat Annette, a 110 year old gaff rigged schooner, to clean up the wild and mostly uninhabited archipelago. Plastic waste washes up on the tide and covers the beaches, threatening wildlife and polluting the area, so we will collect and record marine rubbish from the beaches, coves and coastline whilst aiming to raise awareness about ocean plastics. With your help, we plan to make this voayage four times a year, hopefully with more and more volunteers each time, so we can keep the Isles of Scilly a beautiful paradise.

Back in February 2019, we undertook our first amazingly successful and eye opening expedition to the Isles of Scilly with a wonderful team of volunteers. Our next mission will take place in November this year. This is the best time of year to go, to not disturb wildlife so we can get special permission to visit the smaller uninhabited islands which are the ones that are the most polluted, as they are mostly untouched. We are currently restoring our beautiful boat Annette, so she can be the one to take us to the Islands in November. The work has started and you can find out more about on our daily updates on social media.

Clean up Scillys wildlife sanctuaries

We have been given special permission from the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust to access Annet, and other islands which usually have a year-round ban on human visitation, meaning we will be collecting and documenting plastic found where hardly anyone has ever been. We are expecting to clean up more than 8 tonnes of man-made marine rubbish from the Isles of Scilly, all of which will be sorted, weighed and recorded, before being brought back to the mainland where it can be properly recycled to ensure it doesn’t end up causing further harm to wildlife.

Our UK coasts and seas are amongst the most diverse and beautiful on the planet, playing host to a wealth of wildlife including dolphins, sharks, whales and turtles. Over half of the UK’s wildlife resides within our seas and many other species such as seabirds rely on them for their survival. By donating anything you can and supporting our work, you will be helping us to continue organising beach cleans, working with local people and businesses on finding solutions to the problem and keeping the issue of marine litter in the public eye. You can help us make a difference cleaning up this beautiful part of our country and help us to continue spreading the message of plastic pollution while gathering valuable information on the litter that is in our oceans and harming our wildlife.

For every £2 we will be able to pick up One bag full of plastic rubbish

For every £10 we will pick up 10 kg of waste

For every £30 we will drag out deadly net from the beach

For every £60 we will collect one dumpy bag full of rubbish washed by the sea

For every £100 we will transport tonne of marine litter from islands to mainland to be properly recycled

Donors of each pledge will receive a link to the movie from the clean-up mission before its release to the public and will also find their name featured in the credits of the film as a thank you!

Why should we care?

England’s enchanting archipelago is exposed to the open ocean, so is heavily polluted by plastic washing in on the tide. Many of the coasts are hard to reach and have never been cleaned, so wild animals are unfairly suffering, becoming entangled or ingesting bits of plastic they mistake for food.

100,000 marine mammals and 1 million seabirds die every year from plastic pollution, 20% of which comes from boats, with the rest coming from land. Over 69% of all litter on UK beaches alone is plastic, with micro plastic particles outnumbering plankton 26 to 1. A staggering 8 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans every year, that’s equivalent to one garbage truck of plastic dumping into the ocean every minute.

With these shocking statistics, it’s easy to understand why we care so much about keeping as much plastic as possible out of our oceans. There are so many things we can do as consumers to help, but unfortunately so much damage has already been done, so it is our responsibility to try and clean up as much as possible.

Our first expedition was SUCCESSFUL!

• In February 2019, together with the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, we cleaned up five islands and other beaches on Samson, Tean, White Island, Gugh, St. Marys, as well as at Coverack, Prisk Cove and the Helford river.

• We removed marine litter from 8 miles of coast.

• We collected 39 dumpy bags of rubbish, weighing 3528 kg, which added up to an incredible 16,713 individual pieces of plastic picked up.

• We have spent 1100 volunteer hours cleaning plastic pollution.

We are very excited about our next expidition to the Isles of Scilly in November, and we need your help! We had a brilliant group of passionate and tireless volunteers (who we couldn't have done it without) with us on the February trip, and if you would like to join us on our next voyage, send us a message on Facebook!

Please share, donate and spread the word to help us on our plastic free mission! Thank you!

Follow us on social media Facebook, Twiter, Instagram, LinkedIn @cleanoceansailing, #cleanoceansailing

More about us at www.cleanoceansailing.org and Patreon

If you have any question please contact us at cleanoceansailing@gmail.com

Here are some articles about us :)

Remotest beaches in Scilly target by cleaners

Boat heading to Scilly to help clean beaches

Cornish anti-plastic group given 2018 John Mackey Award

Meet the crew from our Isles of Scilly February expedition!