21OCT12: We did our third beach clean of the week in Lembeh which takes us over the 100 kilo mark for the amount of marine debris collected from our resort beach.  Our beach is approximately 150 metres long so the 102 kilos of marine debris collected was from a very small area.

This time we collected 38.5 kilos of marine debris in just a 30 minute clean-up by our resort and diving staff.  In Lembeh we have had some heavy rainfall overnight in the past week and we think that maybe trash that has been disposed of incorrectly is washing in to the ocean with the heavy rains.  Hopefully if we continue to track and report our data Project Aware can help us target local governments to start to dispose of rubbish correctly before it becomes marine debris.

As ever our main substance collected was plastic, very little of other materials.  Our finds included 791 food wrappers, 354 Aqua cups, 41 plastic bottles, 575 plastic bags plus some more unusual items such as a toilet brush and some broken children's toys.

As we cleaned up the beach and the waterline we were very lucky to see some Sargassum Frogfish and a tiny juvenile Batfish floating in the weed at the surface, but they were very close to being washed ashore with the plastic so we released them further away from the shoreline in to another weed float!