The Asociación Ondine conducted a land and sea clean-up of El Toro Marine Reserve on Saturday. This was in collaboration with the regional government's fishing and marine environment department, Calvia Council, the Mar Balear Centro de Buceo diving centre, Soller Divers and Bonnie Lass Charters.
Twenty-five happy hikers met at 10.00am to walk down to the area of El Toro where local fishermen spend their time in the months when fishing is permitted within the reserve. There they collected nearly 100kgs of rubbish, mostly plastic bottles, many metres of discarded fishing line, weights and lures, beer and wine bottles, seats, umbrellas and plastic bags.
One of the most disturbing sights was to see nests from local seagulls full of fishing line and plastics. Fledglings were seen who were obviously just finishing nesting in these plastic polluted nests.
The underwater clean-up was conducted from two vessels, RV Bonnie Lass with Soller Divers and the dive boat from the Mar Balear diving centre in Port Adriano. With fifteen divers in the water, a great deal of fishing line that had been discarded was collected. In fact, there was so much fishing line at some depths they were not able to collect it all. All the rubbish was taken back to Port Adriano and discarded by the Port Adriano workers.
Asociación Ondine conducts beach clean-ups throughout the year and invites people to contact them to organise clean-ups with schools, groups of friends, businesses and clubs here in Majorca.
Asociación Ondine – Clean & Healthy Balearic Sea. For more information visit www.asociacionondine.org