littoral: sci-art project

After our big towing event on Thursday, yesterday I downed oars and spent the day drying clothes, resting a dodgy knee with a kelp bandage on and enjoying the sun. Wanting to have a day enjoying the beauty of the island I set myself the challenge to ignore the remaining litter on the beach. Keeping this in mind Cal and I spent the afternoon meandering from rock pool to rock pool enjoying the wide variety of rocks that make up the pebbles and cobbles on the beach. Eventually we climbed the biggest rocks at the north end of the beach jutting into deep water where I dangled a fishing line into the clear water for a few hours, looking into the sea became mesmerising, spotting sea urchins anemones and starfish all clinging tight to the rocks, unfortunately the only fish I saw were smaller than the fly’s on my hooks .

Living on an island and not having caught a fish to eat feels a great omission especially as I realised my stock of food was running low, fortunately there was/is plenty of biscuits and coffee left. But the nagging question is where are the Mackerel surely there should be a source of sea food on an island?

Today I woke looking forward to rowing the dinghy and towing the remaining three litter lines off Isle Martin to Ardmair. My plan soon had to be re-configured to accommodate the strong easterly winds that had set in, the next job on the list was to remove the un-connectable bits of litter mounded up on the beach but how?

Thankfully my project has been supported by John a generous boatman  who today offered to tow the mounds back behind his yacht. So the tangles of rope, net, shoes, hats and plastic boxes were ferried out to bedeck John’s boat. The luxury crossing only taking 30 minutes even in the choppy seas, once moored the reverse dinghy to shore process was quickly carried out making sure we were also able to make the opening of a new exhibition of work ‘Source’ by artist Barbara Peffer at An Talla Solais few miles away in Ullapool.

As I still have litter lines waiting to be towed to the mainland and I need to collect my kit together to head back on the road this coming wee, to follow the recycling journey. I decided to return to the island tonight if possible. As the wind seemed to have dropped a little I decided one last evening crossing would be possible. I quickly wheeled the dinghy down the slipway on a sack trolley with me underneath it like a turtle until reaching the seaweed on which I could smoothly launch it into the water. As soon as I was in the boat I realised the tide was still pulling and that the easterly wind was picking up. Both causing me to quickly assess my route across, so I headed into the wind as I knew I would soon get pulled quickly in the direction of the island once beyond the protection of the moorings. No time to think of seals, surrounding landscapes and nearby seabirds tonight only pulling as hard as I could and holding my course and nerve.

On reaching the safety of the pontoon in record time fueled by a massive adrenalin rush I began to think how essential it is to have a powered boat  for anyone to be able to live on Isle Martin, Accessibility to the island is a necessity for the Trust to be able to develop their work here. Perhaps the biggest challenge for the Trust and myself is to raise funds  to be able to develop our projects!
Crowd funding has been the prime funding source for this second stage of my project together with the in kind support from individuals like John Mcintyre, Dave Falkoner and all the skiff rowers plus organisations like An Talla Solais, Ullapool Harbour Trust, Ullapool Museum, Ullapool High School. For which I am hugely indebted a massive thank you!  At the end of a long day/week I see my biggest challenge after  rowing across a lively sea is to find funding to enable the project to continue and to follow the strong lines of investigation developing. Any ideas please get in touch!

It may have been a grey dreich day but it has been a wonderful day crossing Loch Broom.

Two teams of people managed to successfully tow over 150m of litter off Isle Martin today, in celebration of World Environment Day. The thousands of pieces of litter were collected and joined together on the Back Beach of Isle Martin over the last two weeks.

Thankfully the day started calm and warm though with light rain as the first team of Ullapool High School pupils arrived with Topher their teacher at 10.30am. After a very quick break for oranges and biscuits on the beach we carried the lines of plastic bottles and bottle caps down to the waters edge, where they were tied together and then onto the skiff.

The line stretched over 75 metres behind the boat even though the bottles were light the drag they created , plus me being an extra person in the boat certainly made it a harder row back to were they had started from earlier. The team pulled together well and steadily and it was great to see a pupil steer us so well to Ardmair slipway through the moored boats and buoys. A great contribution to the project and to showing what we can do pulling together to care for the environment.

Well done : Norman, Jake , Mairi, Mhairi and their teacher thanks also to the head teacher Robbie McFedries for coming out to cheer them in with Lesley Strachan their art teacher.

As the school team headed for a hot chocolate in the campsite cafe the second team donned their life jackets and quickly took up their places in Cul Mor which was turning into a wonderful sociable place to be. Our second team was coxed by Merlin a director of the Isle Martin Trust, with all important oars people John (ecologist/engineer/invaluable project supporter), Bill ( Ullapool Museum volunteer), Lesley (Ullapool High School teacher) Anne ( member of the Ullapool Coastal Rowing Club) and myself (photographer)
Our row out was magical as the rain eased and we glided swiftly from the shores of the mainland to those of the Isle in wonderful monochrome light and mist.

Ashore we selected the long blue lines of rope , plastic containers and threaded polystyrene to attach to the skiff . in a bid to get closer shots of the lines I took up the steering position. For this trip we had Cal on board as our living misquote in the bow of the boat with John.
On the return we kept up a steady pace followed at times by cormorants seagulls and we think possibly accompanied at one point by a minky whale. Quite an entourage to witness the litter being removed almost all of which must have been washed up on the island as its not been habited for years.

As we neared the mainland we saw that Dave (today’s photographer) had wonderfully returned to document our arrival   and a group of holiday makers keen to see and hear about our endeavors . So the World Environment Day  ( United Nations  World Environment Program)  message is spreading. To work together to make a difference no matter how small. Over the next few days I will tow the remaining litter lines off the Island and bag up the mounds of random materials that I couldn’t use and take across to the mainland to be picked up by the highland Council on Monday and in the coming weeks I will be tracking and reporting on the recycling journey each of the litter materials.

Many thanks to everyone  who joined me today to work hard and have fun celebrating  ‘World Environment Day’  – many more photographs of the event to follow over the next few days

6am: Weather check : Calm,  overcast , drizzle, light breeze

Throughout the day we have a 60% chance of rain with wind speeds of up to 8mph  later from the North North East  NNE to North East  NE

So the Littoral World Environment Day Event will be happening very shortly! The first  Litter Lines will leave Isle Martin at approximately 10.45am today. Keep watching !

Litter Line event – Isle Martin – World Environment Day- 5th June 2014

08.00        Weather check confirm/reorganise
09.00        Prepare lines, refreshment s for rowers
10.00        School skiff team and boat arrive at Ardmair slipway
10.15         Row to Isle Martin Back Beach
10.45         Lines secured onto the skiff while skiff team have refreshmentso
11.15          Skiff sets off to Ardmair with lines and Julia
11.30         Skiff arrives at Ardmair slipway, lines pulled up. Skiff team thanked
12.00        2nd team arrives at Ardmair.
12.30         2nd team row back to Isle Martin
1.00          Break on the beach , lines attached
1.45           Row back to Ardmair slipway
2.15           Arrive at Ardmair lines hauled up stored for collection on Friday
3.00          Thanks and celebration (beach or Ardmair teashop)

Please ring Julia for confirmation , updates on times etc 07977997605

The last few days  have involved tightly focused  collections from the beach in order to make sure that I only select the 12 items that I  selected to make my lines from,  to enable me to complete the  construction of  my lines before the ‘tow off’ on Thursday

Commercial items such as rope , prawn boxes, gun cartridges, and domestic items such as bottles and  caps . The items are the most commonly washed up and the the ones that I have found  methods to simply link them together by piercing, drilling threading and stitching. The unselected litter such as the mounds of tangled rope and random objects will be bagged up and carried to the mainland in the boat. All the litter line and bags are to be picked up n Friday Morning by the Highland Waste Services

As I called a halt to more collections yesterday, I am now turning to testing making lines on the waterand organising where to take photographs from to capture the event.  And the all important letting people  know the where and when of the day.  A rough schedule will be posted today, please pass this information onto anyone you know who is involved.  For those following further afield please let people know about the event and support our World Environment Day by commenting on the blog and twitter @LittoralArt. She you tomorrw weather permitting!

This afternoon I had a wonderful visit from four Ullapool friends to assist me in making my Sunday collection of litter from the Back Beach.

It was great to have help to carry the plastic bottle lines already assembled back to the beach and to share what I have come to know about the beach with them and to discuss the sheer depth of the litter that pervades beaches like this even when they look seemingly clean. After many sweeps of the beach collecting bottles, caps, cans, ropes, gloves polystyrene, melted plastic we quickly sorted and carried our nets of objects back to my temporary workshop.

By the end of the afternoon we had threaded over 300 caps onto approximately 25m of plastic cord and line before we  had a well earned snack before my friends boarded Johns elegant ‘ferry’ back across the loch. Watching them leave I wished for the loch to be as still as it is tonight on Thursday for towing the lines to Ardmair.

I began this project in response to the horrifying amounts of litter that I found along  a strandline in the area two years ago. Ten months on from starting this investigation in Ross-Shire, I am now analysing a new strandline thankfully this line is less inundated with litter. Though what is here still saddens me.

To enable me to map the litter items on this beach and I set out my own temporary lines at 10 m intervals crossing the 100m strandline. I walk each of the lines notating the items I can see along the lines to give me a more detailed idea of what tends to be found where in the ‘littoral zone’ , a valuable collection of data I want to work with in weeks to come.

 
Having recorded the positions of the items I am now engaged in collecting and sorting the litter, and beginning to make my ‘litter lines’. Each specific type of material being linked together e.g. prawn boxes sewn together using packaging straps, plastic bottles linked together with fishing cord. At the moment I have 8 different lines underway.
I want the ‘litter lines’ to draw out what is happening along our strandlines, each line graphically illustrating what’s found on our beaches and the quantity of the items found.

‘Everything tells a tale if you can see it’  Philip Pullman

Friday: With the westerly winds  set strong for the next few days, I decided to make the most of my time on the mainland by doing a day’s investigation on a remote beach opposite Isle Martin re-nound for collecting litter as it faces due west. The walk in to Dun Canna beach is along the Coigach ‘Postie Path’ which is a fabulously dramatic craggy path which links Strathcanaird to Achiltibuie and for me a chance to view Isle Martin yet another perspective .

About ½ mile from the beach I began to encounter caught plastic objects crates, bags , bottles all being blown along the burn that meets the beach and began to think how beach litter clean ups need to extend above the strand line, to uncover the camouflaged objects.
The beach is extensive over 800m long and from a distance devoid of any massive litter objects. A closer look at the standline and it is strewn with litter, I decide to continue my 10m video documentation and to survey and clean 1metre square of the line – purposefully a less cluttered section.

The square contained:
28 plastic bottle caps, 67 pieces of net/cord 14 pieces of plastic, 11 pieces of rope, 5 pieces of plastic strap, 1 piece of shrimp box
Collecting the pieces together plus other litter objects I filled my net bag up and prepared to walk back to the van when I turned and caught sight of what I like to think is one of my missing oranges? I wonder if so, from which launch location?

For the origin of the Orange Back Story click here