Cleaning the Beaches of Tortuguero

One of the teams working their way up the beach. (It was a beautiful day!)

The end of 2011 saw the citizens of Jalova participating in a beach clean where we collected and removed washed-up garbage along the Tortuguero Beach. On that occasion we cleaned the beach to assist the Ocean Conservancy in their annual data collection on the state of coastal areas. The beach is always receiving new rubbish and so a beach clean is always a great thing to do in the National Park, even if there is less data collection going on!

Zach Halter in a non-posed shot; picking up refuse, a forgotten soul?; the team in progress

Plastic, rubber, tin, questionables - we gathered them all. For just a one mile stretch it felt like so much longer with the sheer amount of rubbish we found along the sand. Our treasures ranged from the average tin can to dismembered dolls to heaps and heaps of shoes to plastic fruit. Singular shoes... Somewhere out there there must be a hoard of people onboard ships shuffling around partially shoe-less!

PIling high: the results of the beach clean

After gathering all the rubbish into bags, a huge team effort was put into dragging our haul a mile down the beach towards the river mouth where we could then transport it on our boat to the town of Tortuguero where it is sorted into recyclable categories. Such exertion strained at the muscles! In the end, we formed a massive pile with bags upon bags of rubbish; of objects that no longer pose as environmental hazards to the wildlife of our beach. Job well done.

-Yannie, GVI intern

Cleaning the Beaches of Tortuguero