Balloons, straws, old fishing nets, oil, paraffin, and even pieces of garden furniture. This is just a minor selection of the litter that was cleaned up by Save Our Sharks and a lot of enthusiastic volunteers on the beach between Castricum and Wijk aan Zee. The cleanup was part of the Boskalis Beach Cleanup Tour by the North Sea Foundation. The stage of Sunday was part of a Caribbean relay. At the end of the Cleanup, the baton was symbolically handed over to a representative of Save Our Sharks Saba and our zealous colleagues and volunteers on St. Maarten and Aruba cleaned the beaches of their respective islands. Earlier this weekend, nature organizations on Bonaire, Saba, and St. Eustatius had cleared their beaches in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund.
It was the first time that such a cleanup relay was organized throughout the kingdom. In total, a staggering 800 kilos of waste were collected on the stretch of beach between Castricum and Wijk aan Zee.
On a global scale, coasts are flooded with plastic waste. Many marine animals get stuck in plastic bags and packaging or mistake plastic products for food, often with a deadly outcome. For this reason, Save Our Sharks decided to join the Boskalis Beach Cleanup Tour, an initiative of the North Sea Foundation, which will clean the beaches along the Dutch coast throughout the summer.
