Keep the Oceans Clean! starting with Alicante's Postiguet Beach

For the past month or so I've been helping out as a local contact to organise a beach clean here on Alicante's main beach, the Postiguet, and yesterday was the big day! The event was part of an initiative called Keep The Oceans Clean!, a global environmental campaign organised by the Volvo Ocean Race and a group of artists (who happen to be surfers) called Skeleton Sea. The purpose of this programme is to raise awareness of the problems posed by the long-life trash floating around in our oceans, piling up on our beaches...  A beach clean will be organised in each of the 10 stop-overs of this incredible round-the-world race, hoping to get as much local participation as possible, starting here in Alicante!

Playa del Postiguet

useful tools

Because of bureaucratic problems (it took forever to get the permit for the event!), we weren't able to really promote the beach clean properly 'till the day before. That added to the fact that it was a weekday means we didn't get as many people as we would have liked. But those that came (people from the Volvo, members of a local surf club, volunteers from the Red Cross, divers...) were all very willing and very active! We even had a special guest:

putting on Wisdom's feet

 Wisdom! The Volvo's mascot who is apparently a big hit with the kids:

We started off with a short briefing:

and Xandi Kreuzeder, one of the Skeleton Sea artists, showing us what can be done with trash:

flower anyone?

And so everyone donned a pair of gloves, grabbed a bag, and off we went!

mini-cleaners! (photo by B.Ballesta of Alicante Surf Club)

I ended up heading out in the opposite direction from almost everyone else, got "lost" in these rocks, pulling out pieces of glass and broken bottles:

photo by B.Ballesta of the Alicante Surf Club

It was a lovely afternoon to spend on the beach, with a couple of the huge Volvo sailboats cruising around practising for Saturday's regatta...

lol! Here's Xandi "diving" into his work!

We ended up with quite a bit of trash:

photo by the Alicante Surf Club

but most of it was of the cigarette stubs and lollipop stick variety, not really "quality" trash for what we need...

I missed out on the group shot (still lost in the rocks), but at least I got a couple of great shots with Jacqui (the organiser) and Wisdom before he left:

That albatross is so cuddly! I wish I could have just birdnapped him... but he was a bit to heavy to run away with! :p

So if we did a great job of cleaning up the beach, why am I complaining about not getting "quality" trash? Well that's a story for another day... but here's a preview:

Skeleton Sea will be creating a sculpture in each of the stopovers with the trash collected in the beach cleans! I'll share more of their work with you another day. Here's the official news post on the day's event.