02 February 2012

11 Feb (Sat): Tanah Merah clean up - first of a year round effort

Step up to make a difference for the amazing living shores at Tanah Merah! Join the first of a series of year-round clean up on 11 Feb (Sat), 8.30-10am, meet at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal Departure Hall. Full details by Site Buddy Gladys Chua.
There's lots of work to do on 11 Feb, as this recent recce of the site shows. Bravo to International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) for initiating this effort!

Among the amazing marine life seen on these shores was a Spotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari)!
Oil-slicked Tanah Merah: Spotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari)
Also lots of seagrasses, corals, sea stars, moray eels and reef fishes of all kinds. I have been visiting these Tanah Merah shores every month since the oil spill in May 2011 and blogged about what I saw. It's wonderful to know that ICCS is going to mobilise to protect these shores!

On their blog, ICCS explains this new effort:

Marine life returning to the shore is subject to numerous stresses including a very high load of plastics and other debris as well as tar balls which persist and wash up from oil spills long forgotten.

These areas have been well recce’d by ICCS Recce Captain Andy Dinesh over the years, who also assists ICCS Zone Captains Xu Weiting and Cai Hongxia oversee the cleanup in September.

ICCS intends to initiate a programme of year-round cleanups at Tanah Merah East in order to grapple with the magnitude of trash on that shore.

These cleanups, separate from our data-driven September cleanup, will be either managed directly or in support of an Organiser of a corporate group or institution interested in contributing to this effort.

To initiate this programme, we are recruiting motivated individuals from amongst ICCS Organisers and Site Buddies, National Volunteer and Philantrophy Centre’s ICCS Site Buddies and Green Champions as well as ICCS alumni and members of the public.

From this pool, we hope to have enough volunteer Site Buddies who can manage cleanups at Tanah Merah at least four times a year. Once this mechanism is set up, the ICCS Year-Round Cleanups at Tanah Merah East will be integrated into the National Volunteer Oil Spill Action Plan which we are developing, in order to prepare volunteers to better respond in a crisis on our shores.

Full details and updates on the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore blog

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails